


Night is Falling, and the Dawn is Calling

by Juxtaposie



Series: For the Unknown [8]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Child Abuse, El least of all, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Medical Trauma, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, No One Is Okay, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Very Brief Graphic Violence, brief mention of attempted sexual assault of a minor, brief mentions of sexual situations between minors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-05 19:35:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 48,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16817065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juxtaposie/pseuds/Juxtaposie
Summary: '...she was finding more and more that self-awareness was a double-edged sword. She’d always comprehended that she was different than her peers, but the more time she spent in the world, the more she felt the gap between herself and others widening - it was expansive, now, and uncrossable. That knowledge made her ache.For one brief moment of insanity, she wanted to scream, “It doesn’t matter!”Nothing she did would ever bridge that gap.'Time forces El to confront her trauma, and no one is prepared for the fallout.Updates Wednesday and Sunday.





	1. Prologue: to be near you is to be able to feel

**Author's Note:**

> We're officially off hiatus! Happy day! 
> 
> This is it - the cornerstone of the series, the idea on which all the others were built. This is a heavy one, my loves. Please, please, please observe the tags and read with caution. Take breaks if you need to.
> 
> Also, even though it's a little spoilery, I want to get this out there - the Big Horrible Thing is not based on sexual assualt. I have to say that because it is Very Important To Me that we get away from stories where we use the sexual assualt of women and girls (or anybody for that matter) as an entertainment trope. It's tired and lazy, and we can and should do better.

Mike had no memory of how El’s lime green scrunchie had ended up on his wrist, but now it was all he could look at. He could almost remember pulling it from her ponytail so he could tangle his fingers in her hair as they’d kissed, but it was hazy (though whether because he’d performed the action countless times in the last year, or because he’d been completely preoccupied with the feeling of her teeth grazing his neck, he couldn’t have said). 

He wasn’t supposed to have her over when his parents weren’t home - and hadn’t that been a fun conversation after Karen had caught them making out in his bed - but they’d broken that rule so many times neither of them even stopped to consider it anymore. So when his mother had taken Holly to a friend’s house, and told him she’d be running errands all day, Mike had been quick to seize the opportunity. The entire party was showing up around two anyways, so what did it matter if El showed up around noon?

They’d done homework for an hour or so. She had an essay on _The Scarlet Letter_ \- which she _abhorred_ \- due on Wednesday, and Mike had done his best to talk her down when she’d gotten frustrated, but she’d bitten her bottom lip every single time she’d put pen to paper and eventually he’d given in to the overwhelming urge to kiss her. She’d been all too willing to let herself be distracted, and after a few minutes she’d taken his hand and pulled him with her into the cozy security of the blanket fort, where she’d pushed him gently onto his back, straddled his hips, and kissed him again. 

She was laying against him now, ear pressed to his heartbeat, and the lime green scrunchie stood out in stark contrast against her dark hair, which he was stroking absently. She shifted a little, laying her chin on top of her hand and gazing at him with a contented smile that broke into a sunny grin when he tucked an errant whisp behind her ear. 

“Okay,” he breathed, trying to decide if the nauseous feeling creeping up on him was nerves or excitement. “We’re gonna do this.”

She echoed the sentiment with a slight nod, turning her head to press her lips against his palm. 

“And you promise you’re sure?” he pressed, cupping her face in both hands so she’d meet his eyes. “You’re not, like - you’re not scared or anything?”

“Six months, two weeks, four days,” she replied cryptically as she reached up to brush the hair back off his forehead.

Mike, who usually had no trouble following her non-sequiturs, said, “I don’t know what that means.”

“How long I’ve been sure,” she said, her eyes dark and serious.

“Okay,” he said again, and she laughed. 

There was a long stretch of silence where she laid her head back down and tugged on both of his wrists until he had his arms around her again. He let his hands drift upward, fingertips pressing into the notches of her spine and twisting in the loose waves falling across her shoulders. 

“I guess I should, uh-” He choked, cleared his throat, and swallowed down his nerves. His face felt like it was on fire even though they were alone in the house and there was no possible way anyone else was going to hear him, or even know they’d had this conversation. “I guess I should go buy condoms tomorrow, or - I don’t know, sometime this week.”

She shifted off of him, tucking herself against his side, and said, “I can do it.”

“No,” he said immediately. “No, it’s - it’s fine, I’ll do it.”

He felt El’s head moving on his shoulder, and when he glanced down she was looking back up at him, her expression elated and adoring. “It’s okay,” she said, lifting a hand to stroke his cheek, “to be scared.”

It was pure bluster when he said, “I’m not scared,” much too quickly for it to be genuine. “I mean I’m - I’m not _scared_ , I’m just sort of - sort of-”

“Nervous?” she supplied with a smile. “Excited?”

He hugged her close, tucking her head under his chin. “Yeah.”

“Me too,” she said, snaking an arm around his waist. The movement pulled her closer, opened her stance, and in another heartbeat she’d thrown a leg across him.

“And, uh, you’re sure you’re sure-” He had to stop to clear his throat again and collect his thoughts. He’d been doing an awful lot of babbling that morning. “You’re sure about the blanket fort? And the timing?”

“Blanket fort’s good,” she said before shrugging. “Timing could be better.”

His mind raced, looking for something else, something that would give them more time, something that would assure they’d be alone for a few hours at least. His parents had dinner at the club every third Friday - their own weird version of date night - which usually left him to watch Holly, but he was confident he could bribe her to stay in her room with candy and the promise of PG-13 movies if she behaved. If El wanted the blanket fort (not his bed, or hers, or the station wagon in a dark driveway) then Friday was best. Friday was perfect. Friday was-

“Could be sooner,” she mumbled. “Tomorrow. Now. Sooner.”

“Hey,” he teased, face coloring again at the thought. “You’ve been sure for six whole months and I’ve only been sure for about ten minutes. Cut me some slack.” She made a face, eyebrows drawing down in confusion, and he went on, “It’s a figure of speech, it means - or no, it’s an idiom, i think-”

El interrupted by laying her fingertips against his mouth, effectively shushing him. “I know what it means. Ten minutes?”

He wrapped his fingers around hers, pulling her hand away, and shrugged, the movement rocking her head . “I mean… yeah, more or less.” 

She looked down at their clasped hands, which were laying across his stomach, but not before he saw the way her face fell. His heart clenched painfully in his chest. 

“Hey, no, not - not about you, I’ve always been sure about you - us.” He squeezed her hand. “It’s just…” and he paused, because he didn’t know how to say what he wanted to say without hurting her feelings. How could he tell her that it would kill him if she ever looked back and regretted anything she’d done with him? That he knew she loved him, and he loved her, and he wanted this, wanted _her_ , desperately, but before that could happen he _needed_ to know she wanted him just as much - not out of some sense of obligation, or because it was what teenagers did, or even just because it felt good, but because she wanted _him_. 

(How could he undercut her, doubt her decision, tell her the reason he’d always wavered and pulled back was because deep down in the darkest parts of him he still doubted she knew what she was asking for?)

“I just want it to be perfect,” he said finally, cringing internally at how corny that sounded.

El squeezed his hand, then let it go so she could wrap her arm around him again. “It doesn’t need to be perfect,” she said as she nuzzled into his shoulder, lips ghosting over his skin. “Just you. Just… normal.”

“Yeah,” he said as he shifted, rolling her onto her back and settling between her parted knees. “Normal sounds pretty good.”

She smiled, threading her fingers through his hair to pull him down, her mouth already open-

-and someone banged on the front door hard enough to rattle the glass.

“Shit,” Mike hissed, sitting up so fast he knocked his head on the underside of the table. “Ow, fuck, fuck, here.” 

They made a mad grab for their shirts - which El completed suspiciously fast - before scrambling out of the confines of the fort. She was halfway up the basement stairs, running full tilt, by the time he realized she’d thrown on his sweatshirt, leaving him with nothing but the lacy, light blue blouse and yellow cardigan she’d been wearing before he’d taken them off of her. (He had zero idea where her bra had wound up, but he somehow doubted she’d put it back on.)

“No!” He tore after her - bashing his elbow on one of the table legs in the process - taking the stairs two at a time and shouting, “No! We’re not doing this again! El!” 

She swung around the doorframe, laughing, and he almost managed to snag her wrist but lost his footing on the last step and had to catch himself or risk faceplanting into the floor. He huffed and sprinted after her, his longer legs easily closing the distance between them, and reached her just before she reached the front door. She shrieked when he wrapped both arms around her waist and hauled her clean off her feet, spinning her away, but he heard the locks clicking behind him - “How is that fair?” he demanded - and then the door swung open to reveal the rest of their friends, Max and Lucas in the lead. 

“I guess we’re not worth putting a shirt on for,” Max said raising her eyebrows. “Nice scrunchie, though.”

“I put a shirt on,” El replied through her laughter. “Mike, where’s your shirt? You’re being rude.”


	2. Chapter 1: through every vein i feel the flood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason I'd thought you could set a chapter to post at a later time (when maybe you couldn't get to a computer). As such, this is going up before I go to bed, instead of 12AM Tuesday night/Wednesday morning like I had planned. That's probably going to be true for all subsequent chapters. 
> 
> This is it. Read those tags. Please, darlings, read those tags. There's no turning back from here.

“Come on, come on,” Will was muttering under his breath, too low for anyone but El to hear. She’d been resting her head on his shoulder, already wilting with the late hour (it was after one in the morning), but had lifted it at the sudden turn of events. Together, Dustin and Lucas had managed to distract and disarm the gray slaad, while Max, Will, and El had held off the small troop of heavily armed cult members from the other side of the chamber door. Lucas had just struck what was likely to be the killing blow - if he rolled high enough for damage. There were three six-sided dice rolling around between his cupped hands. 

Dustin was clutching the top of his head in both hands, pulling his curly hair down around his ears like it would protect him and chanting, “Oh my god,” so loudly they couldn’t hear the dice rattling. 

“Holy shit just roll!” Max exclaimed, shaking Lucas’ shoulder. 

“Okay! Okay, here goes,” Lucas said, and released the dice. 

Six pairs of eyes followed the motion as everyone leaned over the table, each holding their breath as the dice spun, slowed, and finally stopped, each with six pips facing proudly skyward. 

The basement erupted into chaos. Max and Dustin both screamed, “Yes!” the former throwing her arms around Lucas while the latter leapt to his feet, fist punching the air above his head. Will was shouting wordlessly, both hands drumming on the table so hard the figurines were shaking, while El clapped wildly. She laughed when Mike caught her eye and winked at her, and didn’t even try to resist the urge to kiss him. She put a hand on the back of his neck to draw him to her, but only made it halfway before a fist closed around the back of her sweatshirt. Annoyed, she swatted at the hand without turning to see who it belonged to. 

“Uh-uh,” Dustin said firmly. “No. You can have your victory makeout later, when we’re not all watching you. Take us home, Dungeon Master!”

Mike responded to this by closing the distance between them himself, pressing a quick kiss to her scowling mouth before settling back into his chair. “Halbarad, you plunge your enchanted dagger deep into the slaad’s heart…” he began, his hand finding hers under the table while he narrated. 

They killed the monster and broke the spell on the cult members, and while the boys settled in to finish off the cold pizza Max grabbed El’s arm with a terse, “Come help me,” and pulled her up the basement stairs. El let herself be led into the kitchen, where Max turned to her with a mildly embarrassed look and asked, “Do you have any pads?”

When El didn’t reply, unsure what her friend was asking, Max’s eyebrows started climbing toward her hairline. “Tampons?”

“Oh,” El started, feeling her own face coloring for no reason she could name. Something uncomfortable unfurled in her stomach. “No. Sorry.”

“Well shit,” Max sighed. “You think Mrs. Wheeler-“

“Upstairs bathroom,” El cut in, eager for the moment to be over. There was something about the way Max was eyeing her that told her she hadn’t managed to hide her discomfort as well as she hoped. “Bottom drawer.”

Snorting, Max asked, “The chief told you it's rude to go digging around in other people’s shit, right?”

El nodded.

"Don't care?" Max asked with raised eyebrows, trying not to smile.

El shook her head and they both bit back giggles, a little bit of the tension dissipating.

She tried to go back down to the basement then, but Max made a pained noise (that sounded hilariously close to the same noise Lucas made when things weren’t going how he wanted), and cut the stairs a glance before looking beseechingly at El. “What if I wake someone up?”

El rolled her eyes but turned and crept up the stairs, more than happy to help and happier still to have the conversation ended. Mr. Wheeler was out of town on business, and Holly, who was almost six, slept like the dead. She might have been worried about waking Karen, but just a few weeks ago Mike had told her that he suspected whenever his dad went out of town his mother “forgot” (he’d made a strange gesture with both his hands, and then had to explain air quotes to her) that she wasn’t supposed to drink on Valium. He’d been angry and sullen when he’d said it, so El suspected it wasn’t the sort of thing you were supposed to do, but whatever the reason behind it the result was that an elephant in the living room would have been hard pressed to wake Mrs. Wheeler. 

She found the half-empty cardboard box right where she’d known it would be, stashed in the bottom drawer under the sink along with an assortment of detritus - old plastic headbands and hair ties, mostly. The little plastic-wrapped square crinkled between her fingers as she plucked it from the box, turning it over in her hands and trying hard to push down the thought that wanted to rise.

\- _wrong something was wrong_ she _was wrong wrong_ -

But if she thought about any of it she’d have to think about _all of it_ , and that looming threat, that all-pervasive, overwhelming feeling was enough to let her slip comfortably into that deep-down place she kept inside herself. It was easy and safe there, dark and warm and familiar. She could watch and listen. She didn’t have to feel. 

It was hard to stay there when Max hugged her tightly at the top of the basement stairs, refusing to let go until El hugged her back. The boys were setting up the board for Clue, and Mike shot her a look when she settled on the couch where Will was already sitting. 

“You don’t wanna play?” he asked gently, concerned. It was late, but only by other people’s standards. She didn’t always make it to 6am like most of the party, but it was rare for her to throw in the towel so early. 

She shook her head, and gave him a smile she hoped looked more genuine than it felt. 

“Okay,” he said, bending to kiss her. He resumed his seat at the card table while El stretched out, laying her head against the couch arm, her knees bent to keep her feet out of Will’s lap, which was currently occupied by a sketch pad and an assortment of pencils. He was making a valiant effort to keep from nodding off, but the sketchbook kept tilting, and the third time he had to bend down to retrieve a pencil from the floor Lucas said, “Give it up, man.”

Max and the boys had all teased Will mercilessly their freshman year of highschool for his total inability to keep from falling asleep anytime they were all together and he sat still for more than five minutes. El had gotten used to the way they joked with each other, even if she didn’t often join in - her sense of humor was both a little skewed and woefully underdeveloped - and she hadn’t meant to take them to task for it. All she’d done was gently point out to Mike that Will was probably exhausted because he slept so little at home, and Mike had reacted like she’d slapped him. She’d felt bad when she realized that Will hadn’t shared this with anyone (she herself only knew because she’d overheard Joyce and Hopper talking one night), because she knew very acutely what it felt like when the people you loved pitied you for something you couldn’t control and didn’t want to think about. She didn’t know if Mike had ever talked to Will about it, but he’d definitely talked to the others, because the teasing had stopped immediately. 

Of course, Will responded to sympathy about as well as he responded to pity - which wasn’t well at all. 

“Turns out you’re not my mom,” he said to Lucas, head tilted back on the couch and eyes closed. “So I don’t actually have to listen to you.”

“I don’t care for Sleepy Will,” Dustin announced loudly. “I don’t care for him at all. He’s grumpy and snide.”

“So, like Regular Mike?” Max asked as she shuffled cards. 

“Yeah,” Dustin agreed, smiling at Mike, who’d started scowling. “Yeah, like Regular Mike.” 

Mike and Will both flipped the middle finger at their friends, who broke down laughing. Will hadn’t even bothered to open his eyes. 

El noticed all of these proceedings peripherally. She felt more than heard their laughter, letting it wash over her like a gentle wave, eyes fixed unseeingly on the ceiling. The banter continued, no quieter for the late hour, and at some point she must have drifted off because when she came back to herself it was dark, and the room was quiet. 

Blind panic filled her for the briefest of moments, and she sat up, disoriented, pushing at whatever was covering her. Her fingers found the soft, slightly scratchy yarn of the crocheted quilt that usually lived on the back of the basement couch, and she realized all the warmth she felt was from a combination of that blanket, and Will, who’d stretched out beside her. He had his head pillowed on the opposite end of the couch, and had somehow had the presence of mind to take the inside. 

They’d all learned the hard way not to surprise her with being caged in, when Dustin had tried to scare her during a game of hide and go seek in the dark (which was just like regular hide and seek, except played in the unlit landscapes of the Wheeler and Sinclair houses, late at night on the rare occasions when the teenagers were lucky enough to have the houses to themselves): he’d snuck up behind her, and she’d thrown him across the room. He’d been fine except for a few bruises, but they’d all been more cautious about making sure she knew they were there, and that she didn’t feel trapped. 

She sat, breathing hard, hands shaking where they clutched the quilt, until Will’s voice broke the quiet. 

“Hey,” he said gently. “You’re okay. Breathe.”

It helped, if only a little. Her eyes, already adjusted, picked out the shapes of the furniture, the lumpy masses on the floor that were her friends in their sleeping bags. Dustin was snoring gently, and Max’s hair, though dulled by the darkness, still stood out in the little bit of streetlight that filtered in through the high window. Lucas was laying beside her, one arm thrown across her shoulders. 

_Where’s Mike?_ she asked - or wanted to ask, but half the words got stuck in her throat, her tongue refusing to wrap around them, so all that came out was his name, her lips stuttering over the first letter.

“Bed,” Will replied, nodding his head back toward the stairs. “I think he didn’t…”

But she would never know what Will thought because she was up off the couch in less than a second, taking the stairs as quickly as she dared, trying hard not to wake anybody but not really caring if she did. She was quieter on the first floor, and quieter still on the stairs to the second. This wasn’t the first time she’d snuck into Mike’s bedroom during a sleepover, and it wouldn’t be the last, but she was bound and determined that Karen would never catch her there again. 

The door swung open for her with just the slightest thought. Mike hadn’t closed it all the way, but she did so now, the latch catching loudly in the stillness of his room. She didn’t even stop to think before shimmying out of her jeans, kicking them under the bed as she peeled back the covers and crawled in beside him. 

Mike had been laying on his stomach, both arms tucked under his pillow, fast asleep, but he shifted when she stretched out next to him, rolling onto his side. He mumbled sleepily as El squirmed closer, into the halo of his body heat, feeling for his arm to pull it around her and wrapping one leg around his hip. “Hey,” he breathed into her hair, shifting so she could wriggle an arm beneath him and lock her hands together behind his back, anchoring herself to him. His hand found its way up underneath the sweatshirt she was still wearing, fingers scratching gently at the small of her back. “I was wondering if you were gonna come up.”

She wanted to reply, to say she’d fallen asleep, ask why he hadn’t woken her up or kicked Will off the couch, but when she opened her mouth the only noise she could find was a shaky breath that sounded dangerously like a sob. 

“Hey,” he said again, sounding much more awake. His arm tensed around her. “What’s wrong? Nightmare?”

But that was exactly the problem, because El didn’t know what was wrong-

- _everything all of it her-_

 _-_ why Max’s gentle, questioning look had snapped some unseen tether inside her. Even now, in the safest place she’d ever known (tucked tightly against one of the first people who’d ever shown her a shred of kindness) she could feel herself swaying, and if she let go, let herself fall, she knew would be dragged down to drown in the river of hurt she could feel flooding through every vein in her body. There’d be no more pretending; pretending she was fine, pretending she was _normal_ , well-adjusted, fit to be out in the world, fit to be anywhere but inside a lab, anything but a carefully controlled experiment, a weapon for the Cold War, a piece of machinery, an object-

“-need to breathe,” Mike was saying, his voice low and striving for calm. “Come on, El. Deep breaths. It’s gonna be okay.”

His gentle insistences continued for the long minutes it took her to convince herself she was fine, and when she felt like she could breathe again she slipped easily into sleep, so completely exhausted by the sudden onslaught of panic that she couldn’t even cry, no matter how badly she wanted to. 

Before she’d fallen asleep, Mike had asked her if she wanted to talk about it, but all she’d been able to do was bury her face in his neck, nose pressed into the shadow of his collarbone, and he’d taken that as the no she’d clearly meant it to be. (He never asked her what was wrong more than once, not since she’d yelled at him last year, frustrated with him for not understanding and with herself for not knowing the words to make him understand. How could she tell him what was wrong when she didn’t even know where to start?)

She slept dreamlessly but fitfully, and it seemed like she’d barely closed her eyes before someone was knocking on the bedroom door. She and Mike both started then froze, and after a painful, protracted moment Max’s voice called, “We’re heading out.”

That was code for, “El, we’re leaving, but we can’t let Mrs. Wheeler know you’re in her son’s bed, and we can’t let Hopper see Mike drop you off, so if you want a ride home you’d better get your ass downstairs pronto.” 

She groaned, rolling away from Mike, and all but fell out of the bed to search for her jeans. She was on her knees digging around in a pile of mismatched dirty clothes when a hand, pale, freckled and familiar, floated into view. When she glanced up Mike was hanging over the edge of the bed, and he cupped her chin and drew her up to him, kissing her softly.

“I love you,” he said, voice thick with sleep. “Call me if you need me?”

She nodded, and kissed him again before pulling her jeans back on. 

Holly spared her a glance when she crept past the living room. The TV was on, blaring Sesame Street, and when their eyes met over the back of the couch El put a finger to her lips. Holly shrieked with laughter and mirrored the hushing gesture, but quieted when El whispered, “Shhh!” She was still giggling when El bolted down the basement stairs. Max had been thoughtful enough to stuff all of her clothing back in her overnight bag - though El wouldn’t remember her missing bra for almost two weeks - and when she finally climbed into the back of Lucas’ car the clock in the dashboard read 8:49. 

Dustin must have lost the roll call for Shotgun (which still happened even though Lucas would never have let anyone but Max sit up front), because he was sitting in the middle seat and it was his shoulder she laid her head down on for the ride out to the cabin. A chorus of muted, tired goodbyes followed her out of the car when they pulled up to the cabin’s walking path, and El trudged the last length of the journey in a bleary haze. The morning light was wan and gray around her, and the air was sharp and cold; too cold for Mike’s sweatshirt, and it was only then she realized she’d left her coat. March had warmed considerably from February, but there were still snowdrifts piled between the roots of the trees. 

The wind stung her cheeks, chapped her lips, and the short walk inspired a sense of calm wakefulness she only partially felt. By the time she climbed up the front steps of her home, she knew what she had to do. 

“‘Morning,” Hopper called from the breakfast table, and El felt a surge of affection. Sunday was Hop’s only real day off, barring a major crime, but he routinely forfeited his best opportunity to sleep in so that they could have breakfast and spend the day together. Most often she did homework while he did the crossword, then they fell asleep together on the couch after lunch, but it was a routine they’d perfected in the last couple of years. 

Her heart dropped into her stomach knowing she was about to disrupt that, but she felt that same surge of affection again when she realized he would never begrudge her this. 

Dropping her bag on the couch and crossing her arms against the sudden chill that worked its way up her spine, she said, “I want to see the box.”

If Hopper was surprised he didn’t show it. He gazed at her impassively as he took another bite of scrambled eggs, then gestured to the steaming plate across from him. “Sit,” he said. “Eat your breakfast before it gets cold, then we can-“

“I can eat while I read,” she cut him off. 

He sighed, and wiped his hands before pushing away from the table. “All right.”

The box in question had been a gift, of sorts, from Doctor Owens (who El still didn’t really trust, and never would despite the assurances of both Hopper and Will) and it contained every medical record and experiment note he’d been able to find on Subject 011. It had been his way of saying thank you for saving his life (and likely the entire world), and had been carefully curated, copied and snuck out page by page over the course of a year and a half at great personal risk. “This is yours,” Hop had said when he’d brought it home. “You can do whatever you want with it - read it, bury it, burn it. I didn’t look at it and I’m not going to unless you want me to, okay?”

El had made him promise, and Hopper never made promises he couldn’t keep, not anymore. 

She’d entertained destroying it, taking it into the woods and setting it on fire like Hop had said she was free to do, but in the end it had gone under the house with the rest of the boxes. She’d pushed it away, deep into the recesses of her mind with all the rest of the things she wanted to forget-

- _the constant cold, the controlled meals of applesauce and lukewarm oatmeal, the prick of the nutritional IV when she’d realized she could refuse to eat, one little choice she could make herself how much it had meant to have that small thing how Papa had still been able to take it from her-_

 _-_ and it had stayed there in the dark for the last two years. Now, she thought, there might finally be some use for it. 

“I’m, uh, not gonna try and talk you out of this, hon,” Hop said as he moved the couch, “but where did this sudden interest come from? Everything okay?”

“Yes,” she lied, spurred by the concern he was trying to mask - he only called her “hon” when he was worried and didn’t want to show it - but she regretted it immediately, and amended, “Maybe. I don’t know.”

He was pulling away the area rug, his eyes on the floor, when he asked, “Something happen with your friends?”

(“It's just not something you usually talk about with men,” Joyce had said, when she’d been conscripted to give El a very thorough talk about puberty and procreation the summer before she’d started school. “Sometimes they can get weird about it.”

El had been troubled by the thought that there was something so mundane she shouldn’t share with Mike, especially because Joyce couldn’t tell her _why_ they got weird about it. Until last night she’d been quietly grateful she hadn’t needed to keep that particular secret.)

“I’m sixteen,” she said, not even attempting to put it delicately. She was already too tightly wound to think of the words she would need. “I still don’t get my period. That’s not normal.”

“El,” Hop sighed, hands stilling as he looked at her from where he was kneeling on the floor. “We talked about this with Doctor Owens, remember? You were stressed and starved for a long time. You’re gonna be behind other kids your age in a lot of things. It’ll happen when your body’s ready for it to happen.”

“What if it doesn’t?” she demanded, voice rising. 

“Then there are other options we can-“

“You said it was mine,” she cut him off, heart suddenly racing in her chest. “The box. You said I could do whatever I wanted with it. I want to see.”

He sighed again, ran one hand across his forehead, then pulled the trap door open. 

Listening to Hopper’s muttered swearing, El was grateful he hadn’t made her go under the house and get it herself. She knew where it was just as well as he did, and she would have had less trouble with the crawl space, but he hadn’t insisted and it hadn’t occurred to her to offer. She hoped it said something good, that he wanted to help her in any small way he could

Kneeling by the trapdoor, she took the box he handed up with surprisingly steady hands and hauled it into her room. It bounced when she dropped it on her bed, the contents inside shifting with a sound like dry, crunching leaves. She ripped the lid off before she could think about it, feeling familiarly detached from her pounding heart and sweating palms as she ran her fingertips across the files inside. They were arranged by year, though the earlier ones were much thinner, and the earliest started well after she’d been born - at least three years, give or take a few months, because her birth had never been properly documented. 

The lights in the cabin dimmed and flickered as she plucked the first file out, but Hopper appeared in the doorway before she could open it. He stood there, leaning against the doorjamb with her breakfast plate in one hand, then sighed and moved into the room. With a deep breath she reined herself in. The mattress dipped under his considerable weight when he sat beside her and put the plate down between her and the box. 

“If you’re looking for answers there are other ways to find them,” he said, wrapping one arm around her shoulders and tapping the file in her hands. “There’s nothing in here that’s not gonna hurt you.”

El nodded, considering, because he was right, after all, but the way she saw it the damage had already been done. It filled her with an overwhelming sense of dread to know that everything that had happened to her, everything she’d been trying to hide from, had been coldly, clinically recorded by the people who’d hurt her, and all that information was right in her hands. She’d been nothing more than a piece of equipment to the scientists in the lab, a tool to be calibrated and used and put away; not a scared, lonely little girl who’d been hugged so rarely she didn’t even know the word. 

(What a sweet memory it was, to think of Mike and Dustin’s arms around her as they’d knelt on the cliff top, how her own arms had known what to do without being being told. Papa had put his arm around her often, and he held her hand, and sometimes when she was too tired to walk he’d pick her up off the cold floor and carry her to her bed. He never stayed until she fell asleep, the way Hopper had the first few weeks she’d been with him, but she’d hoarded the memories of those moments like a starving animal hoarding food, reliving them over and over as she drifted off in the total darkness of her windowless room.)

“I’m already hurt,” she said finally, and she sensed more than saw the way Hopper’s face contorted at her words. 

His arm tightened around her. “You want me to stay?”

El shook her head, eyes still on the folder. She had some idea of what she’d find when she opened it and, at least for now, she wanted to keep that knowledge close, desperate not to give her friends and family one more reason to feel sorry for her. 

“Okay,” Hop said, ruffling her hair gently and pressing a whiskery kiss against her forehead before heaving himself off the bed. “I’m right outside if you need me.”

El closed the door behind him with an absent gesture, breathing hard but only distantly aware of it, and opened the folder. 

What she found was anticlimactic, for the first file - as well as the second and third - contained very little of interest. There were medical records of checkups and physicals, a few mentions of childhood illnesses, and not much more. The most interesting thing she found was the same signature at the bottom of every page. She still had trouble reading handwriting, and signatures were especially bad, but her blood had gone cold, her heartbeat ramping up into double time, when she finally recognized the letters: M. Brenner. 

The signature seemed to suddenly take up most of the page, and for a long moment she thought she might be sick. Like a child hiding from a scary movie, El covered her eyes, then thought better of it and clapped a hand over the signature. In the next instant there was a sharpie in her grasp, pulled from the cup of pens and pencils on her little desk without any conscious effort. She jammed it against the page, right over the ‘M’, and scribbled so furiously the felt tip started fraying, breaking through the paper to mark the one beneath it. Her heart wouldn’t slow, but the overwhelming urge to revisit last night’s dinner eased a little. 

She kept the marker beside her, letting it roll around uncapped, completely oblivious to the black marks it left on her bedspread and jeans. Her breakfast, pushed off to the side, went cold. 

She’d been about seven (or six, or maybe eight) the first time they’d cut her hair. She remembered it, blearily, but only because what had followed was her first stint in the tiny, dark room that was still her own personal hell. The lights had flickered while she’d screamed and thrashed. The page detailing all these things bore a handwritten note in the same tiny, slanting scrawl as the signature - “results promising.” The experiments had started in earnest, after that. 

She’d gone into the isolation tank for the first time that same year, though it had been another eight months or so before she’d found the strange, lightless place they now called the Void. She’d been denied sleep, food, water, and, on two separate occasions, oxygen - applied stressors to elicit a response, the notes called these tests. (She had to look up both “elicit” and “stressor” in her well-worn Meriam-Webster’s dictionary, reading the words with cool detachment, assigning their meanings to the words on the lab notes.) She’d broken her hand pounding on the thick door of her cell, and once an orderly hadn’t been careful and her left shoulder had come out of the socket. She’d been sedated dozens of times for being “uncooperative.” These reports of injuries and incidents had been preceded by the phrase, “Subject resisted, resulting in…” There had been more injuries of course; hand-shaped bruises on her upper arms, and skinned knees from being thrown around like a rag doll. She’d cracked her head open on the floor once, when she’d passed out and slid sideways out of her chair, and no one had been quick enough to catch her. These weren’t noted. 

She’d been pushed past the point of exhaustion so many times she’d lost count - not that she’d really ever even tried to keep score, because what did it matter when it had been happening, and what did it matter now? Papa - Brenner, she kept correcting herself, though it never stuck - had been relentless, single-minded, focused solely on wringing everything he could out of her. How proud he’d always been when she’d succeeded where the others before her had failed. He’d never said so of course, not out loud, but she’d always been able to see it in the twitch of his lips, the way his eyes would shine. 

And then it occurred to her very suddenly that he’d never been proud of _her_ ; he’d been proud of the program, and for no reason she could explain the thought left her breathless - more than breathless, she felt bereft. He’d been her whole world. She’d loved him desperately, and she’d never been anymore than an on object to him; not a person, not even an animal. 

He’d been so careful in encouraging her attachment, so calculating. He’d ordered all of her punishments, but never doled them out himself. Every gift she’d ever received, every kind touch she’d experienced, had been from his hand. When the orderlies had thrown her into the dark room, he’d always opened the door and taken her hand to lead her out - once or twice he’d even swiped a thumb beneath her eyes to wipe away the tear tracks, but he’d rarely hugged her, or offered her any comforting words. No one else in the lab had ever talked to her, not even the nurses who’d drawn her blood, administered her drugs and bathed and dressed her. They’d touched her gently, but not lovingly, not the way she’d felt Papa had always touched her. 

(After her talk with Joyce, Hop had let her have Eggos for dinner, and cola, and when she’d finished eating he’d looked at her, his face full of worry and said, “I’m going to ask you something and I want you to be honest with me. You’re safe here and I’m not going to get mad at you or let anything happen to you, okay?”

“Okay,” she’d echoed, already uncertain. It hadn’t been the first time Hopper had prefaced a question with that statement, and it wouldn’t be the last, but El never knew what to think when it happened because sometimes the question was so meaningless to her she had no idea why he thought asking it would hurt her, and other times she screamed and cried and couldn’t calm herself down for hours. Sometime she’d just feel that curious, numbing nothing. She’d wondered what it would be this time. 

Hopper had paused then, his thumbnail picking at an imaginary snag in the vinyl tabletop, and El had known he was trying to find the words to say what he wanted to say in a way that wouldn’t upset her. 

“You and Joyce talked about sex,” he said finally. “How it’s something special you share with someone who respects your body and your boundaries - something you give. It’s not something someone can take from you. When that happens, and it does because the world is full of terrible people, that’s not sex. That’s rape. Do you understand?”

She’d nodded, her stomach churning with the knowledge, and Hop’s voice had been so soft, so carefully neutral when he’d asked, “Did anyone in that lab ever do that to you?”

Joyce had asked her that too, and El had said, “No.” She’d done the same thing with Hopper that day, her voice low, eyes trained on his hand, still worrying at the table’s surface. 

“No?” he’d prompted, head lowering until she’d met his gaze. 

She’d shaken her head, swallowed down the lump in her throat, and said, “But…”

Hop’s shoulders had started to relax, but they’d tensed again when she’d kept talking. He’d waited, quiet and still, while she’d gathered her words. She’d been telling the truth - nothing like that had ever happened to her. The entire staff at the lab had strict, standing orders not to interact with her in any way, and going against those orders meant forfeiting your job, and on one occasion, your life. She hadn’t shared that part with Joyce - she hadn’t shared it with anybody, not even Mike - and she’d never know what had compelled her to speak that day, to say, “Someone… almost. Once. Papa caught him, and…” She’d held two fingers up to her temple, mimed pulling a trigger. “He made me watch.”

She remembered the way he’d knelt in front of her, how he’d tugged the shoulder of her gown back into place and reached behind her to fix the snap at her neck that had come undone when it had been yanked away from her body. “There now,” he’d said, smoothing a hand over her shorn hair before he’d stood. “No more tears, Eleven. I will always keep you safe.” 

If she tried, she could still recall the brilliant red splashing across the white wall of the hallway, streaked through with something pinkish-gray and chunky.)

Hop yelled a lot, but he’d never hurt her. It had taken her months to trust that he wouldn’t try, and even now she still sometimes jumped when he raised his voice or slammed a door too hard, but he was gentle when he reached for her. He hugged her, ruffled her hair and kissed her goodnight. He helped her with homework, sat with her when she was scared and never belittled or dismissed her fears. He’d woken her from nightmares and held her when she cried. 

In all the time she’d lived with him, the roughest he’d ever gotten with her had been that first spring, when they’d been standing together at the sink, washing dishes, and he’d dropped a cast-iron skillet. He’d stumbled back, out of range, and grabbed her elbow to yank her away with him, mindful of her bare feet, his grip tight and bruising. El had meant to catch the skillet, but Hopper’s hand clamped around her elbow had stolen all of her focus and knocked the breath from her lungs. That had been a hard night, full of nightmares and crying, where she’d struggled to find the words to tell him what had happened in her mind-

- _they’d always grabbed her up under the arms, just one when she was smaller, but it had taken two by the time she’d been nine struggling and thrashing biting at the hands that came near her face screaming while the lights flickered Papa watching impassively as they dragged her to the room threw her down on the floor and closed the door dark and cold and alone no sound but her own crying_ \- 

-when he’d grabbed her. 

It was only when Hopper called her name that El realized the dull thudding she’d been hearing had been him knocking on her bedroom door, and not her own heart pounding in her ears. 

“What?” she called, voice harsh and watery. When she swiped the back of her hand under her eyes it came back wet. 

“What do you mean what?” Hop said as he came into the room. He looked at her, noticed she’d been crying, but didn’t comment. “I had to knock four times before you answered. Here.” He replaced the plate of cold eggs and toast with a sandwich and apple slices. “Do us both a favor and eat something, okay?”

He stared at her pointedly until she picked up one half of the sandwich and took a bite, then pulled the chair out from her tiny desk and sat down, his eyes darting around the bedspread. El chewed and swallowed mechanically, taking in the papers scattered around her, the open dictionary, the strewn volumes from her encyclopedia set (which had been a costly gift, even used, courtesy of Hopper and Joyce two Christmases ago). 

“How ya doing?” Hopper asked gently. 

She shrugged, shoved a slice of apple into her mouth, and mumbled around it, “What’s a lumbar puncture?”

“A what?” Hop said, brows drawing down in confusion. 

“Lumbar puncture,” she repeated, turning the folder over in her hands and shoving it toward him. “It’s not in my books. Or CSF.”

She’d been looking for both words, first in the dictionary, then in the other references, but neither had cropped up. Whatever a lumbar puncture was, she’d had three of them. Nothing that had ever happened to her in the lab had been explained beyond what she needed to know to cooperate - and even that had been sparse. “You’re going to go to sleep for a little while,” had never included the explanation of anesthesia. She’d never been warned about needle pricks or IVs, or the pain that could linger. 

Hop was looking at the page in his hands while he worried the inside of his cheek with his teeth. He met her eyes, looked down, then met her eyes again and handed the file back. “”It’s, uh…” He took a deep breath and sat back in the chair. “It’s a spinal tap,” he started, eyes searching her face for recognition, and (when he found none) continuing, “It’s a medical procedure.”

“For what?” she asked when he didn’t go on. “What happens?”

“Honestly, honey, I have no idea,” he replied - and there it was again, the nickname. “There’s liquid, inside your spine, and they take a long needle, numb the area - it’s sort of like drawing blood.”

That was enough explanation for her. In truth, she still barely understood what they’d needed all that blood for but she supposed they’d done the same thing with whatever else they’d taken out of her, and she had little interest in knowing what that was, because it couldn’t be anything good. 

She continued reading, heedless of both Hopper’s departure and his speedy return until he sat down at the foot of the bed, the box between them. “You shouldn’t sit with this any longer than you have to,” he said by way of explanation when she finally looked at him, her face blank but her gaze questioning. “Whenever you come across a word you don’t know I can tell you what it means, or look it up so you don’t have to waste time.”

“Don’t wanna talk,” she mumbled, eyes straying back to the chaos of her bedspread. 

“I’m not going to make you,” he said gently. “You can tell me as much or as little as you want, and I won’t ask questions.”

El looked at him again, bit at the chapped skin peeling from her bottom lip, and said, “Promise?”

“Promise,” Hop intoned. 

After a long moment of silence she nodded, just the barest downward tilt of her chin, and together they went to work. 

For a long time, the only sounds in the room were rustling papers, and Hopper periodically reaching around the box to tap a fingernail against the edge of her plate. She ate dutifully, barely chewing before she swallowed, not tasting the food at all. She might as well have been eating cold, congealed oatmeal for all she enjoyed it, and she barely noticed Hopper taking the plate once she’d finished half the sandwich and most of the apple slices - some two or three hours after he’d sat down with her. He brought back a glass of water, and held it out in front of her face until she grabbed it from him, drained the whole thing in one prolonged gulp, and shoved it back in his general direction. 

“You wanna take a break?” he asked when he set the glass down, but he had to call her name twice before she’d even realized he’d spoken. 

“No,” she said absently, eyes still scanning over a detached, detailed account of the sixth time they’d had her crush an empty Coke can. It had taken nothing by then, no more effort than to think of it, and they’d moved on to bigger things.

\- _a glass bottle compressed into a molten lump, a watermelon squashed to a pulpy mass, that poor animal yowling at her from its cage, so afraid that all it could do was pretend to be brave and she couldn’t do it she couldn’t crush its brain like a piece of overripe fruit but she could turn a human head around so far the neck snapped_ -

Hop turned the lamp on when the sun set, and in the blink of an eye Sunday was almost over. She thought dimly about all the homework she hadn’t done, but instead of the mild anxiety she usually felt over school, there was just… nothing. Hopper said something then, and rose from the bed, but El just nodded, unhearing, and then he left the room. 

She found precisely what she was looking for in the first half of the file labeled 1981 - May, to be precise. There was more medical jargon than she knew what to do with, but some of the words she’d already learned, and when she’d looked up all the words she didn’t know and ascribed their meanings she set the folder aside and started gathering the papers around her. She returned the original contents to the box, with the exception of that one folder, closed her books and stacked them neatly on her desk, and finally - finally - capped the sharpie marker she’d all but ruined. She dropped it back in the pen cup when she strode out into the living room.

Hopper was standing at the stove, heating something up in a large pot - soup, maybe, or the stew they’d had the night before last. She didn’t know or care. “Gonna get ready for bed,” she said as she dropped the folder on the kitchen table. “Page forty-eight to fifty-three.”

She retreated to her room, contemplating her undone homework, to grab her pajamas, and hurried into the bathroom. She made the shower as hot as she could stand, washed her hair, and scrubbed herself down with bruising force, trying to rid herself of the feeling that her skin was crawling. Afterwards she stood for a long time under the spray of the shower head and let herself drift. 

It was easy to find the Void. She’d gotten so much stronger in the last few years; she didn’t even need a blindfold now, and static helped but wasn’t necessary. Even if she’d needed it, the water pouring over her would have been more than enough, and it provided a warm background to the dark, cool nothingness. Finding Mike was even easier. She’d done it so frequently that some sort of connection had formed between them, and she’d no more than thought of him before the shadows shifted, the smoke coalescing into a familiar form. 

He was in his room, hunched over something on his desk, one long leg bouncing agitatedly. She walked slowly around the desk and crouched beside it, drinking in the sight of his face as something sweet but painful clutched at her heart. He was working from his honors chem book, head propped tiredly in one hand while the pen in the other tapped against his open notebook in time with his bouncing leg. She watched as he mouthed the words he was reading, his eyes scanning the page, reveling in the dark lines of his lashes, the freckles she loved that were already starting to disappear with age. 

He sighed suddenly, and dropped the pen before leaning back in his chair, spine popping as he stretched his arms above his head. El felt her heart constricting as he rubbed his eyes with the heels of both palms, and she wished for the thousandth time that prolonged touch were possible here. She wanted to take his hands and kiss each fingertip, crawl into his lap and cradle his face while she pressed their foreheads together. She could almost feel his arms around her, the gentle pressure of his chest against hers.

Instead she settled for sitting on the ground beside him, her arms wrapped around her knees to ward off the encroaching chill as the shower started to cool around her physical body. She stayed there until her teeth were on the verge of chattering, drawing comfort from the sounds of pen scratching against paper, how he mumbled a question to himself whenever the work got difficult. 

Afterwards - after she’d finally stood on shaking legs, planted a phantom kiss against his unknowing mouth and watched him fade in the instant of connection; after she’d beaten back the absurd urge to push herself harder, reach farther, call him back and try, try again like she’d tried hundreds of times to touch him across the distance that separated them (which she would learn to do eventually, years down the road, when his work would take him away from her for weeks at a time) - after she’d finally dragged herself out of the shower, she stood shivering in front of the mirror, water drying on her bare skin as she contemplated the scar, which she was now painfully aware of. It wasn’t an obtrusive thing, faded with time and growth spurts, not like the black ink on her arm (which, she noticed, was covered in deep red welts - she’d been scratching again), but like the little signature scrawled on every piece of paper in that stupid box, it was suddenly all she could see. She’d always known it was there - could remember when she’d woken up with it if she tried hard enough - but like all the other scars she had she’d never bothered to contemplate its origin. She wondered if Mike had ever noticed it. 

She dressed slowly, only dimly aware that she was freezing, and grabbed the nail clippers off the bathroom counter as an afterthought. The fingernails on her right hand were already clipped short, but not short enough apparently. She tried to trim her thumbnail, but her left hand was shaking badly and wouldn’t behave no matter how calm she told herself she felt - which was actually fairly calm, despite her shaking hands and pounding heart. The lights brightened a little, but she was able to keep herself contained. That soothing nothingness was back, pushing all real thoughts out of her head, shielding her from the yawning darkness she could feel rolling over her, like a distant storm rumbling on the horizon. 

Hopper was sitting at the kitchen table where she’d dropped the folder, his head in his hands, but he looked up when she opened the bathroom door. Their eyes met - or at least his tried; hers strayed all around the room as she approached the table and held out the nail clippers, painfully aware of the red that now rimmed Hop’s eyes. “Shorter, please,” she said, not quite looking at him as she held the tiny silver tool out. There was a part of her that knew she wanted to say, “Can you help me cut these shorter, please?” but those six extra words just wouldn’t jump from her brain to her tongue.

He looked at her for a long moment before reaching out with both hands, one taking the clippers from her and gesturing towards the opposite chair while the other grasped her fingertips. She sat, and he glanced down at her hand before trying - and failing - to get her to meet his gaze again. 

“These are pretty short, kid,” he said gently. “It’s gonna hurt if we cut them anymore.”

She held her other arm out to him, and it was only then that she realized she’d put on Mike’s sweatshirt and not the pajama top she’d brought into the bathroom with her. The sleeves hung down over her wrists, but they were so loose on her it was easy to shake the cuff back, and Hop sighed when he saw the raised, red streaks on the inside of her left forearm.

“Okay,” he said, grasping her hand tighter. “Deep breaths.”

It did hurt, but not nearly as much as he seemed to think it would. She didn’t flinch as he clipped her nails down to the quick, not even when he drew blood, and his eyes darted up to her face to find she was looking across the room, gazing at nothing. “Sorry, hon,” he murmured, and when he wiped the swelling bead of scarlet away with the pad of his thumb all she could do was nod. 

When he was done he put the clippers down, still clutching her fingers, but his grip lost some of its rigidness, and his touch was suddenly and unexpectedly tender. “You know you can talk to me,” he said softly, head craning downward in a vain attempt to make eye contact. 

She didn’t oblige him - didn’t even notice the attempt, honestly - but the words, “I know,” lept, unbidden, from her mouth. He sighed softly, ran his free hand over his face, and opened his mouth, but before he could say anything El climbed to her feet and pulled her hand out of his grasp. “I’m going to bed,” she said numbly. “Goodnight.”

Hopper sighed again, then stood up to gather her into his arms, pulling her close against him. She went willingly. 

“G’night,” he replied, one hand clutching the back of her head. “Love you.”

“Love you too,” she echoed as she slipped out of his grasp. 

The silence that followed her out of the room was deafening, but El packed it into the little black box at the back of her mind, crawled under the covers, and turned the lamp off with the tiniest tilt of her head. She snuggled down into the blankets, pulling them up to her chin to ward off the early spring chill, and it was only when she settled that she realized the file box was still sitting at the foot of her bed. 

She glared at its shape, still apparent even in the pervading darkness of her room, but made no move to shift it off the bed. Instead, she pulled the covers up over her head and tried, in vain, to sleep. 

When sleep wouldn’t come she drifted, first through the Void, then through the dark, warm recesses of her own mind. She found the false calm, the easy numbness, but no matter how deep she dove her heart wouldn’t calm in her chest. She was tired, so tired, but that niggling feeling of anxiety wouldn’t leave her alone. It was almost as though she’d forgotten something, and she knew she’d forgotten something, but she just couldn’t remember what it was - only the problem, of course, was that she knew exactly what it was. 

What she couldn’t figure out was why she couldn’t push it away, like she’d pushed everything else away. 

The phone rang at some point, even though it was late, but Hopper answered it, spoke briefly to whoever was on the other line, then hung up and went out onto the porch to smoke a cigarette. 


	3. Chapter 2: she had not known the weight until she felt the freedom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here's Sunday's chapter late on Saturday because I go to bed early like a grandma.

El kept drifting, and sleep never came, but she was still startled, somehow, to realize the sun had come up. The clock read 8:07. 

For the first time in almost twenty-four hours she felt something real - panic. 

She bolted from bed, swearing as she kicked over the box still sitting there and the files scattered across the floor. She ignored the mess in favor of stripping off her sweat-soaked pajamas. (Had it been hot last night? She couldn’t remember.) She dressed hurriedly - clean underwear, bra, leggings, an oversized sweater that had been Mike’s just last year but was still practically a dress on her. She . . Wrist covered. A scrunchie - bright white - to pull back her hair, which was a wild, frizzy mess because she’d slept with it down and wet. She carried her backpack and shoes out into the living area, and glared at Hopper, who was staring at her from the kitchen table, fork frozen halfway to his mouth. 

“You didn’t wake me up,” she griped accusingly and she sat down to stomp her feet, sans socks, into the boots she’d grabbed. 

Hopper was staring at her, his face carefully collected into a neutral expression. “I don’t think school is such a good idea today,” he said, putting his fork down slowly, like he might spook her if he moved too suddenly. “If you need to take some time-“

“No,” she said, the panic tightening around her throat, making her voice sound strained and desperate. “No, I can’t, I-“

- _I can’t don’t make me they already think Jane Hopper is weird don’t make it worse don’t make me stay here and remember Eleven don’t make me I can’t-_

“I can’t miss class,” she was finally able to say, the half-truth like ash in her mouth. 

“One day won’t matter,” Hop said, eyes trained on his plate. 

“It will,” she insisted as she laced her boots up. “I’m already behind.”

There was no arguing with that. She’d passed the placement exams for all the subjects she needed for Freshman year, but not well enough to end up in the honors classes (except for math, which she found both challenging and fascinating; once you learned the rules they rarely changed on you), and there were still huge gaps in her knowledge that sometimes blindsided her. English was by far her worst subject. She didn’t know why they’d even bothered to make up rules for it since, as far as she could tell, you could just choose to ignore them and if you did it well enough no one cared. She hated poetry. History was a close second, since all of her classmates had some prior knowledge of it that they’d acquired simply by being alive out in the world, so she was at a distinct disadvantage, and science, so far, had been a mixed bag. She’d done well enough with freshman bio, but she strongly suspected that was because of Mike, who’d been more than willing to help her overcome the language barrier that had been her biggest roadblock. She hadn’t enjoyed the dissections at all. Chemistry, rife with math equations and hands-on experiments, was proving much more interesting.

She needed the structure, the normalcy of routine, to keep her grounded. She knew what to expect from Hawkins High. Left alone in the cabin, who knew where her thoughts would take her. She couldn’t stay home. She wouldn’t. 

“I’ll walk if you won’t drive me,” she said as she stood from the table, slinging her book bag over one shoulder. She made a beeline toward the front door, but Hopper snagged the cloth handle on top of the backpack and hauled her back. 

“Calm down,” he said as he guided her back into her chair. “You have time to eat something.”

Her stomach rebelled at the thought of food, though she hadn’t eaten anything since lunchtime yesterday. “I’m not hungry,” she said quickly. 

“Tough shit,” Hopper said, pushing his breakfast plate toward her. “Eat, or you can make good on your threat to walk.”

She was seriously tempted to storm out the door, but if she walked she’d be lucky to get there by second period. Part of her was able to recognize the good sense in eating, even if she wanted to be stubborn, so she picked up the fork he’d been using and finished off the eggs that were still on the plate, along with the one sausage link. “You manage to get any sleep?” he asked as she glowered at him from across the table. 

El ignored the question - she could tell by the look on his face that he already knew the answer. “Can we go now?” she asked around a bite of toast, hoisting her bag up again. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Hop grumbled and he hauled himself up out his chair. She watched impatiently as he buckled on his holster, and grabbed his coat and hat. 

They’d tramped halfway to the car when he turned to her and said, “Where’s your coat?”

She shrugged all he could do was sigh, but a few moments later he draped the heavy weight of his coat over her shoulders. The morning was cold, and she welcomed the warmth, the comforting smells of cigarettes and shearling and Old Spice. “Sorry,” she mumbled, feeling guilty for both her bad temper and his kindness as she glanced at him.

He waved her off, and reached out to smooth down the flyways around her face. “You’ve got a lot on your mind.”

They rode to school in silence, and when El finally moved to climb out of the car Hopper leaned over the armrest to pull her into a one-armed hug. “You call me if you need to come home,” he said. “You don’t have anything to prove.”

She felt the untruth of that statement very deeply, but nodded and said, “Bye, Hop,” before closing the door. 

The fog that had been creeping back over her in the car descended fully as she made her way through the bustling halls of the high school. If she’d been in a better place her first course of action would have been to find Mike, but her feet took her right to her locker, and when she put her hand on the combination lock she was frustrated to find she couldn’t remember the numbers. 

She stood there for a long time trying to call the code to mind - three numbers, each two digits, right, then left, then right, and then she could switch out her books, only she’d left her history book at home, hadn’t she, and her copy of _The Scarlet Letter_ was still in her sleepover duffle, along with the whole notebook, and the essay she’d never finished, and her pencil bag was still sitting on her desk next to the forgotten history text.

The warning bell rang, loud and shrill, and a pair of arms descended around her - 

- _grabbing both wrists as they folded her arms across her chest lifting her off her feet while she screamed and screamed kicking wildly until another set of hands grabbed her ankles_ -

-and the next thing she knew she was pressed back against the locker bank, her backpack digging into her spine, barely breathing as bile rose in her throat. 

But when she looked, really looked, and was able to see more than white, sterile walls and harsh fluorescent lighting, Mike was staring down at her with wide, concerned eyes, both hands held up in front of him in the universal gesture of surrender. He was saying something, but the words were lost beneath the thick, fuzzy static filling up her ears. She watched as his hands clenched into fists, like he was trying to keep himself from reaching for her, and before she knew what she was doing she’d shrugged her backpack off. It fell to the floor with a dull thud as she threw her arms around Mike’s waist and pressed her face into him, breathing deeply. The familiar mixture of smells helped calm her jangling nerves, but she realized she’d made a mistake when his arms came up around her shoulders to hug her close and it was everything she could do to keep from sobbing. 

She wanted to focus, to listen to what he was saying, let his voice soothe her, but if she did and he was being sweet - and he was always sweet, and kind, and good to her - she knew she would break. 

Part of her wanted to let it happen-

- _Hop had been right, she should have stayed home, she could have slept, and Mike would have come over after school, worried because she hadn’t been in class, and maybe they would have talked or maybe she would have begged him to touch her, to make her feel like a person and not a broken piece of rejected machinery stupid so stupid why had she ever thought she could do this-_

-but she knew, somehow, that if she did she wouldn’t be able to put the pieces back together. 

She had to say something (he deserved that, at least) but when she finally felt like she could look at him without bursting into hysterics she found there was nothing in her mouth except, “What?”

Mike was looking at her expectantly, the color high in his cheeks, but his face paled a little when she spoke, his eyebrows drawing down in concern. He glanced around them, and swallowed nervously, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I, uh,” he started, ducking his head down by hers. “I said I - I bought condoms. For Friday.” His breath ghosted over the shell of her ear, but instead of the usual tickling pleasure she felt only cold. “I ended up driving halfway to Indianapolis…”

It was as if the ground had opened up beneath her and she was stuck in neverending freefall. How had it been Saturday only two days ago? She’d been so happy that morning. They’d made a decision together, a big one. They’d talked in turn, and listened to each other, and in that moment she’d never felt more loved or cherished or capable - capable of making her own choices and living the life she wanted under terms she would get to dictate. Laying beside him, with her ear pressed over his still-racing heart, wishing with everything she had that the week would go quickly because Friday couldn’t come fast enough, for just an instant she’d been able to see herself as Mike saw her; someone strong and smart, quiet and kind - someone who wasn’t just worthy of love, but someone who deserved it. Someone who deserved him. 

The memory now sat like a stone in her stomach. She hadn’t really made a choice, had she? It had already been made for her, like so many other things in her life. In the end, it hadn’t mattered what she wanted. It hadn’t mattered at all that she’d watched that stupid video in freshman health class with something close to horror, that she’d decided then and there that children of her own were nothing she wanted any part of. The idea of putting her body through that when it had already been through so much was more than repulsive: the thought terrified her. 

She’d known, even at fourteen, that she and Mike were forever, and that eventually that would mean marriage, and marriage, it seemed, meant kids. It hadn’t occurred to her to think about whether she wanted them or not, but having it graphically shoved in her face had been more than enough to convince her. All the married people she knew had children - even some of the unmarried people, like Mrs. Byers. Hop’s own marriage had _ended_ once Sara had passed. Would Mike still want that forever if she told him she didn’t want children? Would he ask her to do it anyway? Would she give in if it was the only way to be with him?

Relationships, it turned out, were much more complex than she’d been able to grasp then, but she’d felt the conviction so deeply and with such emotion that she’d wound up just blurting, “I don’t want to do that,” at him during lunch later that day. The whole table had turned to look at her, five pairs of inquisitive eyes, until she’d said, “We watched a movie in health class.”

A deafening silence had descended, then Mike had choked on his apple juice, and Max and Dustin had both laughed so hard they’d cried. Mike, blushing furiously, had taken her hand and led her out into hallway, and when he’d turned to her she’d blundered on, “Babies. I’m not - I don’t want to do that. It’s messy and gross and-“

- _and she was terrified, terrified of passing on what Mama had passed to her, of making another monster, of painting a target on an innocent child’s back_ -

“Well, duh you don't want to do that,” he'd interrupted gently. “I mean, we’re still basically kids.”

“Never,” she’d responded emphatically, shaking her head. “Not just now. Never.”

And he’d shrugged, still blushing, and hugged her. “Okay.”

She understood now better than she did then what he’d so casually cast aside for her, without so much as a second thought, and they hadn’t talked about it at all since that day - not even on Saturday when they’d talked about virtually everything else. (They hadn’t hit on the subject of marriage either, but El knew that was because it was a foregone conclusion and didn’t need to be addressed until the time came to actually follow through.) That understanding had brought with it the knowledge that she’d made the right decision, but she was finding more and more that self-awareness was a double-edged sword. She’d always comprehended that she was different than her peers, but the more time she spent in the world, the more she felt the gap between herself and others widening - it was expansive, now, and uncrossable. That knowledge made her ache. 

Mike was still looking at her, frowning. For one brief moment of insanity, she wanted to scream, “It doesn’t matter!” 

Nothing she did would ever bridge that gap. 

She had to clench her teeth together to keep the words from coming out. They weren’t right, they would only hurt him, and so instead she made her voice low and even and said, “Okay.” 

His frown only deepened, his hands sliding from her back to her shoulders before rubbing both her arms. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Hopper said you had kind of a hard day yesterday. I didn’t think you were gonna come to school. You’re - you’re shaking pretty badly.”

El nodded. “Tired,” she said, fighting through the haze in her brain to find the right words. “Didn’t sleep good. When did you talk to Hopper?”

“Last night,” he said, palms still skimming up and down her arms. “When you missed our comm call I sort of freaked out a little, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I knew you were okay, but my mom wouldn’t let me use the phone because it was after nine, she said it was rude, so I had to wait until she went to bed, but - Sorry. I didn’t - you don’t seem okay.”

He had his hands up in front of him again, and El realized she’d been slowly recoiling from his touch, her back once more pressed to the locker behind her. She’d thought there was no way she could possibly feel worse, but she’d been stupid about that too apparently, because the hot, burning feeling of shame hit her like a punch in the gut. He’d called her every night for almost four years now, just to make sure she was safe, to say goodnight and (for the last year, at least) to tell her he loved her - and now she could say it back as easily as picking up the telephone, her powers more than strong enough to carry her voice through the Supercomm. He’d called her every night for four years, and somehow last night she’d forgotten. 

She wanted to scream. 

She wanted to run. 

Instead she reached out, took one of his hands in her own, and squeezed. Whatever was happening in her head, the last thing she’d do was take it out on him. She’d rather die. 

Mike squeezed back, and when she met his eyes again she tried to smile. She felt miserable. He looked down at their feet, his face coloring again, and said, “If - if you’re worried about Friday, we don’t-“

The lights flickered above them, just once, and El pulled her hand out of his. “Gonna be late,” she mumbled as she picked up her backpack and slung it over one shoulder. Standing on tiptoe, she pressed a quick kiss against his still-burning cheek, stepped lightly around him, and fled. 

For the first time since starting high school, she was grateful their last names kept her from having homeroom with him. She slid through the door right as the bell rang and all but collapsed in her seat between Max and Dustin. Will, sitting behind her, had his head down on his desk and was using his backpack as a pillow, and Julie Clem - Will’s friend who was almost their friend now - was scribbling furiously in a black and white composition notebook.

“Wow,” Max said. “You look awful.”

“My god, have you no tact?” Dustin replied immediately at the same time Julie said, “Hi El.”

Max rolled her eyes. “That’s hilarious coming from you.”

“You okay?” Will asked quietly. When El glanced back at him, he’d turned his head sideways and pried one shadowed, bloodshot eye open to look at her. 

Not trusting her voice, she simply shook her head. 

Dustin and Max went silent, and Will said, “You wanna talk about it?”

She shook her head again, eyes trained on the graffitied surface of her desk. 

“Okay,” Will said. They all fell silent as Ms. Chandler took attendance, but a familiar hand landed lightly on El’s shoulder and, after she’d acclimated to the touch, squeezed gently. El put her hand over Will’s, clutched desperately at his fingers, and didn’t let go for almost a minute. 

As the day went on, it was laughably easy to avoid being alone with Mike. She didn’t have the words or the energy to repeat their conversation from the morning, and her brain felt stuffed with cotton. She fumbled through the whole day, peripherally aware of the glances all her friends kept shooting her through their shared classes, through every passing period and lunch. When the final bell rang she darted into the parking lot, and snagged Max’s arm just before she climbed into the passenger seat of Lucas’ car. 

“Take me home?” she asked, peering first at Max before bending to look through the open car door at Lucas. 

“Where’s Mike?” Lucas asked, but instead of responding El looked at Max again. They gazed at each other for a few long moments before Max sighed and tilted her head toward the back of the car. El climbed in then laid down across the back seat, so desperately tired she couldn’t even think about what she’d just done. She slept the entire way out to the cabin, all of twenty minutes, and then was so disoriented when they arrived that her friends walked her to the door, Max carrying her backpack and Lucas with an arm around her shoulders. She missed their shared look of concern when they left her in the doorway, and went straight to her room. There were still papers strewn across her floor, the box tipped over beside her bed, but one sweeping gesture and the entire mess had skidded across the floor into the living room. She slammed her bedroom door with a nod, struggling out of her shoes and tights, and pulled her arms into her sweater (Mike’s sweater) so she could rid herself of the horrendous, pinching bra. 

When that was done, when she was untethered from her physical body, she weighed herself down again by climbing into bed, pulling the covers up to her chin and clutching tightly at the teddy bear Hop had given her the first week she’d been with him. 

For a long time it was all she could do to keep breathing. The hour wore on, long shadows stretching across her bedroom floor as the sun started to set, and she was exhausted but sleep wouldn’t come. The phone rang on and off, but the sound was distant to her, and it wasn’t until Hopper sat down beside her that she even realized she wasn’t alone in the cabin. 

“Mike called me at the station,” he said, one warm, heavy hand on her shoulder over the blankets. “He’s worried about you, kid. We both are. You forgot to lock the front door.”

“I’m sorry,” she said automatically. 

Hop sighed, and the hand on her shoulder slid down to rub gentle circles into her back. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” He stilled, sighed again, and said, “Mike’s on the porch, honey. He wants to see you, but I told him that was only gonna happen if you wanted it to. You want me to send him home?”

El thought it over as mindfully as she was able. She didn’t want to talk to him, but the thought of sending him away made her heart ache so fiercely the pain was able to reach her even through everything else she was trying to push down. In the end she shook her head and the mattress moved as Hopper stood, then dipped again a few minutes later when Mike took his place. 

She rolled toward him and pressed her face into his thigh, fearful of what she might see when she looked at him, but then gentle fingers pulled the scrunchie out of her ponytail - it had almost come off anyways - and threaded through her hair, massaging at her scalp. He leaned over her and pressed a soft, lingering kiss beside her ear, and breathed deeply. The position couldn’t have been comfortable for him but they stayed that way for awhile, just breathing together, until he finally said, “You just disappeared after school. You can’t scare me like that.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. Shame unfurled in her stomach again as she pressed her face tighter against him, one hand unclenching from the stuffed animal so she could wrap her fingers around his knee. 

“You’re still scaring me,” he said, his free hand moving to cover hers, their fingers lacing together. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” she choked, wishing he’d just stop talking. 

His hand tightened around hers. “Talk to me,” he pleaded gently. “Whatever’s wrong, we can figure it out together just - just talk to me El. Please.”

She shook her head, the coarse fabric of his jeans rubbing uncomfortably against her cheeks and forehead. “Don’t want to.”

He tensed beneath her touch. “Is it - did I do something? Is this about Friday?”

She shook her head again, and when silence was his only reply she thought they were done talking and now they could just sit quietly together. He could hold her until she fell asleep. She wanted so badly to sleep-

But then a realization struck her like lightning, and she finally forced herself to look at him. The air hummed around them, charged with the unseen energy that lived just under the surface of her skin. 

His face was drawn, features pinched by an overwhelming mix of worry, sadness, and fear. His dark eyes roved around her face before straying to their clasped hands. “I want to believe you,” he said finally, the words so soft she strained to hear them. 

El tried to pull her hand away, and had to yank it out of his grasp when he wouldn’t let go. “Not Friday,” she said as she sat up, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. There was an ugly, sucking feeling pulling at her insides as he reached for her, to put a hand on her arm, but she flinched away before she could stop herself. 

“Then what is it?” he demanded desperately. The hand that had reached for her clenched into a fist on top of the bedspread. “Please, just - whatever happened, what- whatever I did, just tell me.”

“Not you,” she said raggedly, digging her nails into the fabric of her (his) sweater. “Not Friday.” Laying her head on her arms, she took a deep breath that was half a sob. She didn’t want to talk about it -

- _talking about it would make it real and she wasn’t even a real person how could she ever have thought she would get to have anything normal and simple and nice and all she wanted to do was sleep drop into the darkness drift forever_ -

“El,” Mike said softly.

She watched as his dark eyes began to brim, watched how the unshed tears clung to his lashes when he tried to blink them away. She took in the downturned twist of his mouth, the hunch in his shoulders, the subtle trembling that had overtaken his entire body. She was so tired; tired of feeling, tired of trying to contain her power, tired of hurting him, tired of thinking - and then, too tired to think, she did the unthinkable and said, “Go home.”

“No,” he said quickly. “No, I’m not just gonna lea-“

Her heart skipped painfully in her chest. “Go home, Mike.”

All the air left the room. For a small eternity the only sounds were the woods outside her window, then he let out a shaky exhale. “Fine,” he said tightly, the first vestiges of anger creeping in at the edge of his voice. She kept her face hidden, couldn’t make herself watch as he rose from the bed and left her room. Hopper said something to him, too low for El to hear, but Mike’s loud reply of, “Don’t bother,” was clearly audible. The slamming of the front door seemed to shake the entire cabin. 

She missed dinner again, but only because she was sleeping in fits and starts, and when she woke Tuesday morning that curious, anxious half-calm had fully descended, and while it did a marvelous job at dampening her emotions it also dampened everything else. Her skin felt too tight, her appetite was nonexistent, and she almost left her history book again. She had to make Hopper turn back when they were five minutes down the road because she’d forgotten her PE uniform. The _Scarlet Letter_ essay was still unfinished.

(The box, and all of the papers she’d left scattered across the floor of the living room, was nowhere to be seen.)

“I’m still not sure this is a good idea,” he said when he dropped her off. El shrugged one shoulder, and he said, “Yeah, okay, just-”

“Call if I need you,” she interrupted. “I know.”

She went straight to her locker, just as she had the day before, fudging the lock when she still couldn’t remember the combination. She switched out her books, and was the first of her friends to make it to homeroom. She smiled at Julie’s quiet, “Hey,” as the other girl shuffled in, then waved at Dustin when he sat down beside her a few minutes later. He asked if she was feeling better, and she said, “Maybe,” then politely refused all other attempts at conversation. Max rolled in just before the warning bell, and Will managed to slip through the door just as Ms. Chandler was closing it. He dropped into his assigned seat with all the weight and grace of a stone and put his head down on the desk immediately. 

“Rough night?” Max asked as they started attendance. 

Will’s muffled reply was a long groaning noise. 

El floated through the rest of the day, which stretched out behind her in a long, hazy blur. It was easier than Monday had been, due in large part to the fact that Mike wasn’t making any attempts to hide the fact that he was angry with her. He didn’t seek her out during any of their passing periods, and at lunch he sat down at the opposite end of their usual table, took exactly two bites of his sandwich, then declared he had homework to catch up on and stomped off again. She knew she should have been upset-

- _she’d been devastated the first few times he’d yelled at her, had thought in her naivety that if he was mad then they couldn’t be friends, and she’d only had friends for a few days but she’d known through and through that she couldn’t go back to being alone, knew losing them, losing him, would be the worst thing that could happen to her_ -

-but she was curiously unconcerned. In his current state he was easier to ignore than the rest of the party, who wouldn’t stop asking her if she was all right, if something had happened, if they’d had a fight. 

Her response to the inquiries was to flee in much the same way Mike had, but in the opposite direction. She knew he was probably sulking in the repurposed supply closet they used as the AV room, so she went to the library, found a quiet corner, and curled up in one of the armchairs with _A Little Princess_. She read the same sentence half a dozen times before her mind started to wander, only coming back to herself when a hand passed in front of her face so close it almost touched her nose, and she started back in the chair, dropping her backpack onto the floor where all the contents spilled out of the unzipped top. 

“Oh shoot, Janie, I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Putnam, the ancient librarian, warbled at her. “You missed the bell, sweetie. Must be a good book.”

“Yes,” El said, unable to come up with more smalltalk as she gathered her things and zipped her bag up. “Sorry.”

Mrs. Putnam waved her away. “It’s fine. Lord knows I’ve done it before. Let me write you a pass so you’re not late.”

Walking down the empty hallways of the high school gave her a peculiarly familiar feeling of dread, and she briefly entertained skipping and going back to the library. She had honors geometry next, her favorite subject, but her heart kept doing funny things in her chest when she thought about having to sit next to Mike while he pretended she didn’t exist - which was actually fairly tame for him when he was angry. 

In the end she went to class. The door was locked, but she held the hall pass out to Mr. Horan when he opened it, mid-lecture, and shooed her into her seat. She liked Mr. Horan. In some strange way he reminded her of Hopper; he was sort of a hard-ass, and he had a temper, but he was fair, and more than willing to give her any and all help she needed as long as she had the courage to ask for it. He’d never made her feel stupid. 

It turned out, too, that she was saved from sitting by Mike because he’d made Dustin trade places with him, and now both Lucas and Dustin we’re sitting between them in the front row. Her heart did that strange, unpleasant skip-jump thing when she realized this, but then she was pulling out her book and her binder and losing herself in pretending to pay attention. 

When the bell rang Mike launched himself out of his seat, and El took her time packing her books to give him enough of a head start so they wouldn't run into each other, but when she was finally able to get her legs under her Mr. Horan called, “Hopper!” and gestured her toward his desk. Dustin and Lucas both grimaced at her as they filed out of the room.

“You’ve missed the last two assignments,” he said when she was standing in front of him. There was a long pause where he clearly expected her to speak, but when she didn’t he leaned forward in his chair, fingers steepled under his chin. “That’s not like you.”

El shrugged, fiddling with the hem of her oversized cardigan, and he sat back again. “Get ‘em in by the end of the week,” he said finally. 

She nodded, grateful for the kindness even if it wasn’t accompanied by the usual sense of relief, and then spent the better part of an hour suffering through English. She did her best to look like she was engaged in the hopes that she wouldn’t be called on, and her meager efforts were rewarded. The rest of the class spent the period reviewing _The Scarlet Letter_ while she looked out the window and thought about the essay she now had not intention of finishing. 

“Still don’t wanna talk about it?” Max asked later as they made their way from English to study hall. She’d linked her arm through El’s, but she wasn’t holding on too tightly, and El felt a shiver of emotion run through her, the same way it had Monday morning when Mike had put his arms around her. She was tempted, for just a moment, to pull Max aside and confess, cry, let herself feel everything she was pushing down. Instead she pressed her temple against Max’s as they walked, and shook her head. 

Their study hall was held in one of the art classrooms, so it had long tables pushed together to make large squares instead of desks, and Max and El sat down beside each other, each at the same corner. Dustin rushed into the room not long after, then tried to look like he wasn’t rushing at all as he sat down beside El, cleared his throat, and said, “Uh, hey, are you… are you okay?”

El shrugged in reply, and Dustin said, “That’s not really an answer,” before yelping as Max reached around her to knuckle punch him in the shoulder. 

“What?” he demanded, rubbing the offended area. “It’s not!”

Will and Julie, who also shared the period with them, never showed up (which wasn’t so unusual, as they both spent most of their free time in the auditorium or the theatre classroom), and then the bell rang and their teacher was still nowhere to be found. 

“We’re allowed to leave after ten minutes right?” Alan Colmes, a swarthy, sallow-faced junior, said from near the door, and the whole room erupted into loud chatter. El could only clutch her backpack tighter against her chest, wishing futilely that the room would quiet so she could pretend to focus on her reread of _The Scarlet Letter_. 

“Mike’s losing his mind,” Dustin said to her, too low for Max to hear over the clamor of their classmates. She couldn’t tell at all what reaction he was expecting, so she gave none and he continued, “He hasn’t said anything because he’s _Mike_ , but, uh, whatever’s going on - he’s really worried about you.”

El tucked her face against her backpack but then peeked sideways at Dustin, wishing she had any energy or willpower to do anything else. “I know,” she said, still gripping her bag. 

Dustin smiled gently and patted her shoulder, his touch a warm echo of the very first hug she’d ever received. “It’ll be okay,” he said before releasing her as an unfamiliar adult walked into the room. 

It turned out to be the assistant JV football coach, Coach Cashel. “All right you monsters,” he said as he slammed the door closed after him. “Ms. Bircher has a doctor’s appointment or something so I’m here to keep you company. We’ve got forty-five minutes until the last bell so stay in your seats, don’t make too much noise, and do some homework. Or read. I don’t care.” Then he kicked the desk chair out, dropped his massive body into it, and fished a copy of National Geographic out of his bag. 

“Jesus,” Dustin muttered. “You think he’ll let me go to the library?”

As it turned out, he wouldn’t. They all watched as he glanced around the room, spotted Ms. Bircher’s radio, and turned it on. There was some snickering as he turned the dial back and forth on the bandwidth before finally settling on classical music and for no reason whatsoever El felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. 

It happened to her every now and again, usually because of a loud noise or a raised voice; sometimes when someone big moved too quickly or raised their hand too high. It had happened with a couple of movies too, and sometimes when they were watching TV, but she’d never felt anything quite like what was happening to her now. It started gently, like a distant noise that set her teeth on edge and heightened the feeling that her skin was too tight, that she didn’t belong in her own body. Her skin prickled and crawled as she breathed through her nose, trying to contain herself. On either side of her Dustin and Max pulled out textbooks and spirals and binders, and all she felt compelled to do was dig her fingers into the rough canvas of her book bag. The fingertips of her right hand ached, the newly-shortened nails pressing uncomfortably into the tender skin of her nailbeds, and she focused on that dull pain for as long as she could.

She was trembling, and feeling like her body might burst open along some unseen seam, when she finally stood from her chair, made her way to the desk, and stood there for entirely too long before Coach Cashel finally acknowledged her. 

“Yes?” he said, his tone clipped. 

Hands twisting together in the hem of her untucked blouse, she said, “Can I have the bathroom pass?” She had to get out of there. 

Coach Cashel had other ideas. He glanced at the clock and made a vague hand gesture back toward her table. “We’ve got ten minutes left. You can hold it.”

Fear gripped her, consuming rational thought. She was exhausted and afraid; scared she would bring the building down, scared she couldn’t stop the awful power inside her-

- _she had to get out, had to escape, she couldn’t stay she wouldn’t survive_ -

-and before she knew what she was doing she’d stepped past the desk and toward the door. She was reaching for the handle when a huge hand, calloused and heavy, closed roughly around her elbow, and the memories hit her like a freight train. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sick as a dog, guys. Please leave me love?


	4. Chapter 3: a little shy and sad of eye, but very wise

A funny thing had happened to Will the last semester of eighth grade; or at least it was funny to him, even if no one else seemed to see the humor in it. He’d woken up one morning, gotten dressed and gone to school as usual, and then paid zero attention to anything - not because he was distracted, as had happened so frequently in the past, but because he simply didn’t care. He’d spent every single class doodling in his binder, and then when he’d gone home (waving off the offer of group homework and dinner at the Sinclair house) he’d done some very quick math and realized he could blow off every single homework assignment as long as he passed the tests and still make it out of middle school. 

(There’d been a brief but heated not-quite fight with his mom when his last report card had come in and his straight As had all dropped to straight Cs, but Will had been up front with her. It’d hurt a little to listen to his mother, his smart, sweet, hardworking mother try and convince him he was throwing away his best opportunity to get out of Hawkins, to move higher above the poverty line than where they’d been hovering ever since Lonnie had knocked her up with Jonathan and they’d decided to have a go at making it work. In the end Will had worn her down, and then pretended he couldn’t hear her crying in the kitchen when he’d gone to bed that night.)

The way Will saw it, he’d almost died. Twice. 

He’d loved school. Sure, Troy and James had always been terrible, and he’d been shoved into more than one locker, but he was smart, and he had his friends, and most of the teachers liked him. When he was at school, or doing homework at Mike’s house, or watching movies with Dustin, he didn’t have to be at home where his dad would grab him too hard and throw him out into the backyard to play because “boys should be outside running crazy”. He didn’t have to listen to his parents screaming at each other, or worry that Lonnie might finally fly off the handle and do more than just push Joyce away from him when she got in his face. 

And then he’d spent a week in the Upside Down. 

And then he’d been possessed by an interdimensional demon hellbent on taking over his home.

And after that, the everyday drudgery of high school had seemed wholly unimportant. All he wanted to do was make art, and so he’d leaned into the urge. He’d been dubious about joining the theatre club with Dustin, but they’d needed another person who knew how to run the lights and the sound system, and once the parent volunteers had realized they had a kid who not only wanted to paint sets but was actually pretty damn good at it… well, it had seemed like he’d found his niche. 

Not only that, he’d made friends. The theatre kids were gentler, somehow, than the rest of his peers, and slower to judge. They liked Will. They didn’t mind that he was quiet, and a little weird, and they didn’t try to take advantage of his kindness. As a result he’d continued the club after freshman year, and it had turned out to be one of the best things that had ever happened to him. He could spend most of homeroom and study hall in the auditorium working on sets or sorting props or learning sound cues, and when they were getting ready for the fall play or the spring musical there was no shortage of work that needed to be done after school. Some nights he’d stayed until seven or eight in the evening helping build and paint sets. The work was physical, creative and satisfying in a way nothing else in his life had been since the Fall of ‘83. 

Will bit back a yawn as he passed an empty paintbrush down to Julie, who was standing at the bottom of the short ladder he was currently straddling (against the safety advisement sticker on the ladder’s topmost rung). 

“My sentiments exactly,” she intoned as she dipped the brush into a can of blue paint and passed it carefully back to him. “Why does seventh period always go the slowest?”

“I told you we should have skipped,” Will said with a tired smile. He hadn’t exactly been looking to make new friends in the drama club (had assumed, in fact, that most people would continue to ignore or avoid him, as they had all through grade and middle school), so Julie Clem had been a pleasant surprise. She was a quiet, withdrawn sort of girl who, like Will, preferred to stay behind the scenes. She didn’t have any experience with or interest in electronics, but she liked building props. She was smart, creative, and darkly funny - a fact Will had become familiar with the first week of theatre class, when he and Julie had been tasked with cleaning out and organizing the props closet beside the auditorium. They’d had itwo entire school weeks to complete the task, but had finished it by the first Wednesday and had spent the remaining week and a half hiding behind the box stacks, playing gin rummy and listening to old cast recordings on an 8-track player.

“Yeah, well.” She shrugged, smiling back at him. “Some of us actually have to work get that C you’re coasting on. If I miss one more geography class I’m gon- Hey!”

Julie yelled and jumped away as the paintbrush clattered down the ladder to land with a wet, messy _splat!_ on the black stage. Paint went everywhere, but Will was too busy trying to keep himself from falling to notice. The world was tilting dangerously around him, and for one heart-stopping, panicked instant he saw the white hallways of Hawkins Lab, the fluorescent lights flashing and flickering above his head. 

He closed his eyes tight, pleading silently, _Not again not again it's not real you’re not there the gate is closed it’s closed it’s closed_ -

When he opened his eyes the painted blue sky of the backdrop swam into view, and he was so relieved he almost cried, but then he had another problem - he couldn’t breathe. 

He’d had his first asthma attack in the late spring of eighth grade. They’d been out riding bikes, which his mom still didn’t like him to do alone (not that Will could blame her), and the pollen count had been high. He’d known this because Mike had been a sneezing, sniffling, red-eyed mess. What he hadn’t known, what no one had known, was that whatever he’d been breathing for the entire week he’d spent in the Upside Down had permanently damaged his lungs. His friends had all panicked, and then his mother had panicked, and the rest of the week had been spent in and out of the doctor’s office and county hospital. They’d all been stupidly grateful to discover it was something as mundane as asthma. 

He half-climbed, half-tumbled down the ladder, glad for Julie who was reaching for him with both arms. He let her guide him away from the paint and down to the floor and managed to wheeze out, “Backpack,” while making a gesture he hoped looked like someone using an inhaler. Julie darted across the stage into the wings where they always threw their stuff, and came back carrying his scuffed, stained backpack. She dropped it in front of him, and he fumbled for the zipper on the front pocket, his hands trembling as his lungs fought to draw in air. After half a second Julie pushed his hands away, opened the pocket herself, fished out the inhaler and shoved it into his unsteady grip.

The first pull opened his throat, and the second seemed to push air into his too-tight lungs. He sat still for as long as he could, letting the strange mixture of adrenaline crash and steroid energy rush through him in waves that seemed to both ebb and flow, but the panic he’d felt earlier hadn’t subsided completely. It had only dulled into something that resembled the ache in his chest, or the way a deep cut still hurt even after it was bandaged. Something was wrong. 

He had a thought so ludicrous he almost laughed, but he choked the sound down and pushed himself up on shaking legs. “I just need a minute,” he said when Julie stood too and made to follow him. 

Out in the hallway the sense of dread seemed heightened and he could almost smell the fear. He made his way toward the bathrooms but had only taken a few steps before Max skidded around the corner ahead of him, running full tilt, her red hair flying like a streamer behind her. “What happened?” Will asked at the same time she said, “Code Red!”

They both stopped, staring at each other, breathing hard. 

“El?” Will asked. 

Max nodded and started back the way she’d come, Will doing his best to keep up. His lungs burned. 

“I dunno what happened,” Max said as they made their way through the halls. “She’s been kinda weird since - since Saturday, and she just asked to go to the bathroom, but that asshole Cashel wouldn’t let her, and he- he just grabbed her and she freaked. Pushed him-“

“Pushed, or _pushed_ pushed?” Will interrupted, his heart hammering in his chest. 

“I don’t know,” Max breathed, her voice rising. “Both, maybe? The desk moved a little, but she bolted before we could say anything. The class went nuts! Dustin and I beat it before Cashel even got up.”

“Mike’s gonna lose it,” Will said. 

Max snorted. “ _Chief’s_ gonna lose it.” 

They turned toward the AV room, their agreed-upon meeting spot in case of emergencies - a paranoid but necessary precaution - only Will walked right past the door, not sure where he was going. Max yelled something at him but he wasn’t paying attention, too focused on the string he could feel tightening in his chest, pulling him along toward some unseen endpoint. He burst out of the side door, into the bright afternoon sunlight, and stood beneath the metal awning, looking at the treeline that lay on the other side of the practice field. His stomach knotted. He didn’t like going into the woods anymore, not even with his friends. 

“Why are we out here?” Max demanded as she pushed through the door and nearly collided with Will’s back, the others hot on her heels. 

“El’s out here,” Will replied, still scanning the trees. 

There was a dubious silence before Mike, his voice tight, said, “He’s right. If I’d spent thirteen years stuck inside I’d wanna see the sky too. Someone should call Hopper.”

“On it,” Dustin exclaimed. “Ms. Widmer thinks I’m _darling_ , and that’s a direct quote.”

“Ms. Widmer is legally blind and deaf in one ear,” Lucas said. “She thinks everyone is darling.”

“Just go!” Mike said impatiently when Dustin opened his mouth to retort. Silence descended again, and Will was painfully aware of Mike’s fidgeting beside him. “Okay,” Mike said finally. “Okay, we’re gonna do this just like a police search. We’ll walk straight in, fan out, keep each other in eyesight, and- Will!”

That overwhelming sense of panic was growing again, the string around his heart pulled taut by its other end, and Will bolted across the field, running as fast as he could - which, despairingly, wasn’t very fast, especially not after an asthma attack. 

“What are you doing?” Mike yelled, catching up to him easily. He could hear Lucas and Max close behind him, their feet pounding on the hard-packed earth of the field.

“I don’t know,” Will called back, only slowing as he finally broke through the treeline. 

“Then where are we going?” Mike demanded. They were both panting, having sprinted across most of the field. Max and Lucas were barely breathing hard when they came to a halt.

“With everything we know is out there,” Max said, “You’d think the two of you might exercise more.”

“Asthma,” Will replied absently right on top of Mike’s, “Don’t care.”

“Well?” Mike said impatiently.

“Well what?” Lucas responded. “Why are we just standing here?”

“Because Will knows where El is,” Mike said, trying - and failing - to get Will to meet his gaze. “Don’t you?”

But the thought was too big for Will to wrap his brain around, and the panic he’d been feeling - the panic he couldn’t push away because it wasn’t his own - was dulling into a chilling numbness that was proving much more difficult to pick up on. So instead of answering he just took off again, walking fast in a random direction. The others followed behind him chattering back and forth, Mike so close he managed to step on Will’s heel not just once, but twice, and only put some distance between them when Will shot him a dirty look over his shoulder. 

They lapsed into silence the further they walked, and Will was beginning to despair that he’d lost the connection when something compelled him to turn his head, and there she was. El had tucked herself between the bowls of two trees growing so close together their branches had grafted in places. She had her knees pulled tightly to her chest and her face tucked into her folded arms. They’d made no attempts to be quiet, but even as they approached her head stayed down. 

When Mike caught sight of her he shouldered past Will, one hand on his back to steady him, and all but fell to his knees in front her. “El,” he murmured, reaching for her. “El, hey, it’s-”

“Wait,” Will breathed, his heart suddenly in his throat, but it was too late, and Mike’s hand was on her arm one instant, and the next he’d been pushed ten feet from her, skidding backwards through the dead leaves to land on his back with a breathless exhale. 

El’s head snapped up, and the air around them seemed to freeze. No one moved - for a terrible moment Will wondered if any of them _could_ move - but then Mike groaned and pushed himself up on his elbows. El’s eyes, which had been wide and unseeing, focused suddenly, darting between all of them - Mike, Will, Lucas, Max, then-

“Mike,” El sobbed. Her face crumpled, her arms wrapping tightly around her head, and then everyone was moving at once. Lucas went to Mike and helped him sit up out of the dirt, while Will and Max both cautiously approached El, who was rocking herself frantically, her hands white-knuckled fists in her wild hair. She was mumbling, “No,” under her breath, over and over, her eyes shut tight. 

Max was looking between El and Will, and making some violent gestures toward the former, while Will looked at El, his heart bursting with sympathy. It was only when he looked back at Mike that his heart really broke. He’d never seen that look on his friend’s face before - worried and anxious and heart-broken (though Max and Lucas both recognized it perfectly, from that November night in ‘84 when El had marched back into their lives looking like a long-lost member of the Blackhearts). Lucas helped Mike to his feet and they gathered in a loose semi-circle around El, who had stopped speaking but was still swaying, backwards and forwards, her nails digging into her scalp in a way Will knew had to be painful. 

“It’s okay,” Mike said as he crouched again, further away this time - out of what would have been swinging range for someone using their fists. “El, it’s okay. You’re not there.” 

Max crouched too, her face drawn with worry, and Lucas took several slow, big steps backwards. Will, much to his shame, waffled a little before finally deciding to sit, but he reached out on instinct to touch Mike’s shoulder and drew strength from the solidarity he found there - even if that shoulder was shaking under his hand. The air around them was charged as with an oncoming storm, and El was still rocking herself, face pressed into her knees. Mike had his hands fisted against his knees, and his eyes had gone cloudy. He was still talking, pleading gently with her - _it’s okay El it’s okay hey just look at me please_ \- and just as the breathless feeling of panic had slammed into Will not twenty minutes earlier, the knowledge of what he needed to do hit him just as hard.

He sighed, the relief was so palpable. He didn’t know where it had come from, but it was simple and right and he knew it would work.

So while Mike murmured, and Lucas and Max shot each other silent, desperate glances, Will reached out, against all better judgement, and laid his hand over El’s. It felt like a lifeline, like a sip of water on a dry, hot day, like the first breath of air after diving into the deep end. It felt like hope after a week of being hunted, the only bit of warmth in a dark, cold world. She didn’t stop rocking, didn’t even seem to notice any of them were there, but her fingers loosened their deathgrip on her hair and twined with his. He pulled her arm down gently, stretching it across the space that separated them, and said, “Hold on, El. We’re here.”

She lifted her head, but her eyes were wide and sightless even as her hand tightened around his. Mike was looking between the two of them, his lips pressed tightly together, but when he reached out for El’s other hand she took it, squeezing so tightly both their knuckles turned white. 

“Home,” she said, her unfocused eyes roving slowly around. “Hurry?”

“Yeah, home,” Will said, pulling gently on her hand. She tilted forward and her knees left her chest and folded beneath her. “We’re gonna take you home.”

It was easy after that. El let Mike and Will pull her to her feet, let Mike wrap an arm around her shoulders and guide her, shaking and stumbling, back through the woods. When she fell a second time no one had to ask Lucas to slip in between her and Will - she wouldn’t let go of Will’s hand - and together Mike and Lucas locked their arms behind her shoulders and under her knees, lifting her off her feet in a gentle cradle (not the way she’d been carried before, with bruising fingers and too-tight hands). 

It was slow going, especially now that Mike, Lucas, Will and El were all essentially walking side by side. Max did her best to cut them a clear path back through the trees that would allow all four of them to pass as easily as possible, but she pulled up short just shy of the practice field. 

“Guys,” she said slowly. “You wanna carry her through the JV soccer practice?”

“Shit,” Mike swore. “Okay. Here. Just-”

Together he and Lucas set El on her feet, where she swayed and would have fallen if not for their arms around her shoulders. She was still clinging tightly to Will’s hand, their arms stretched awkwardly across Lucas’ chest, while Mike fished in his pocket for the keys to the station wagon which he jangled near Max’s shoulder until she took them.

“Just pull up as close to the field as you can,” he said. “She can walk that far.”

Will had his doubts about that, but thought anything they could do to spare her more embarrassment was a kindness. The actual classes had been easy for her to acclimate to when she’d joined them in public school, but she’d struggled (still struggled) with the social aspects. Being the new girl was hard enough, apparently, without the added baggage of being the police chief’s weird, illegitimate daughter. She’d had a harder time adjusting than anyone had been able to foresee. 

Max took off across the field, only stopping when she passed Dustin, who was jogging their way. The two exchanged some words, then Max bolted around the outside of the building, toward the parking lot, and Dustin came to meet them. 

“Chief’s on his way,” he panted. “It’s gonna be a few minutes, he’s all the way out by the truck stop on 471, but he’ll meet us in the office-”

“I’m taking her home,” Mike interrupted.

Dustin shook his head frantically. “No. No, the chief said-”

Will could practically hear Mike’s teeth grinding. “I don’t care what Hopper said! She wants to go home, I’m taking her home!”

“I hate to say it but I think I agree,” Lucas said. 

Dustin groaned. “Someone’s gonna have to stay here to tell him.”

“Not it,” Mike, Lucas and Will all chorused. 

“Son of a bitch,” Dustin said, shaking his head. 

Max pulled the station wagon around into the drive by the loading dock just as the party limped up. El’s hand was flexing in Will’s, but her eyes were blank, and her mouth was moving soundlessly as Mike pulled open the passenger door. 

“Back seat,” Will said. “I’ll sit with her.”

Mike’s face hardened, his mouth pursed like he wanted to protest, but then he sighed. “Okay,” he said. “Get in and we’ll hand her over.”

Will tried to go around the car, but El’s fingers tightened around his the instant before his grip slackened, and the memory of her hand on his - just a whisper of a touch, the first warmth in days - was so strong he felt tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. It was awkward, to scoot across the station wagon’s bench seat without letting go of her hand, but somehow Will managed it. Lucas had to let go of her so Will could climb into the car, so Mike lowered her into the backseat himself, hooking an arm under her knees to shift her legs into the footwell.

“It’s okay,” Mike said softly, smoothing stray curls back off her forehead with one shaking hand. “I’m gonna take you home.”

Will averted his eyes when Mike bent to press his lips to her temple. El squeezed his hand again, and he squeezed back. Mike shut the car door, and then it was just El and Will in the silence of the cab while Mike argued unintelligibly with the rest of the party, and El chose that moment to lay down, pressing her cheek against Will’s thigh while she flexed her fingers against his, twining and untwining their hands over and over. 

“We’re here,” Will said, sifting his free hand through her sweaty hair. “We’re here, El.”

“Hurry,” she echoed quietly, the blunt edges of her nails digging into the back of his palm.

Mike slammed the driver’s side door when he finally got into the car, and his knuckles were white on the steering wheel but he pulled out of the parking lot slowly and carefully, and drove as though there were an uncovered bowl of punch in the front seat. They rode in silence until they’d passed the last real neighborhood, Will’s hand still stroking El’s hair, Mike still gripping the steering wheel like he wanted to put his hands around someone’s throat. 

“I’m so stupid,” Mike said while they were sitting at a stop sign, his voice so quiet that for a moment Will thought he’d imagined it. “So fucking stupid.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Will said when Mike didn’t elaborate (which wasn’t entirely the truth), “but I’d bet anything you’re exaggerating.”

Mike shook his head. “No. You weren’t there. You didn’t… you didn’t see her.”

“I’ve seen her every day this week,” Will reminded him gently. “She was having a hard time.”

“Yeah,” Mike said bitterly. “I bet her boyfriend being an asshole all day really helped.”

“It probably didn’t,” Will agreed. There was an intake of breath from the front seat as Mike geared himself up to force out all the words piling up on his tongue, and El’s nails, cut down to the quick, dug painfully into Will’s hand. “Mike,” he said before the barrage could begin. “You’re here now, okay? That’s what she’s gonna remember. Let’s just… let’s just make sure she’s gonna be okay.”

“Right,” Mike said tightly. “Yeah, you’re right.”

The rest of the car ride was quiet, but Mike’s knuckles were still pale and he was breathing heavily, like he wanted - needed - to say something. They didn’t speak again until they reached the cabin, and even then it was just a quiet, “Grab her other arm,” which Will was already doing by the time Mike spoke. Together they walked El through the woods, steadying her when she stumbled, Mike murmuring gentle encouragements to the both of them. There was a little bit of shuffling on the front porch when they had to stop so Mike could retrieve El’s keys from the front pocket of the sweater she was wearing, but then they were inside. 

The cabin was cold in a way that set Will’s teeth on edge. They guided El into her tiny bedroom, where she sat down on the edge of her bed with only a little urging. Mike knelt in front of her, his hands fumbling with the knitted laces of her dirty, white converse sneakers, and said, “Can you start a fire?”

Will nodded. Lonnie had been useless for a lot of things, but he’d taught Will to shoot and to build a decent campfire. There was wood stacked by the stove, plenty of kindling and fireplace matches, and in a few minutes there was a cheery fire chasing away both the chill and Will’s fears. He couldn’t wait for summer. 

He poured three glasses of water and downed one of them before making his way back into the bedroom. Mike had settled El down beneath the covers, and was lying on his side, spooned up behind her. It wasn’t quite a peaceful image, not with the way El was staring blankly across the room, but it was the quietest Mike had been all week. He had an arm around her waist, and the fingers of both their right hands were tangled loosely together. Watching the easy intimacy, Will felt his face coloring. 

“I’d offer to drive you home,” Mike said. “But-“

“I wanna stay,” Will interrupted before he could finish. 

For a moment he thought Mike might fight him on it, like he’d been fighting everything recently, but he only nodded. “Yeah. I think… I think she’d like that.”

Will put the glasses of water down on the bedside table and settled down on the floor, his back against the bed close to El’s head, and no one moved or spoke in the half an hour or so before Hopper came barreling through the front door with all the grace of a bull in a China shop. 

“Kid?” Hopper yelled across the cabin. “You didn’t even lock the front door! How many damn times-”

But then he rounded the corner, and Will didn’t need to look over his shoulder to tell that Mike was struggling to sit up, but El hadn’t stirred at all. He’d only managed to get one leg under himself. 

“Well that explains why Lucas dumped all your backpacks in my cruiser,” Hopper said, running one hand over his face. He laid a heavy hand on Will’s head, said, “Hey kid,” then sat down on the bed. By the time Will had climbed to his feet Mike had done the same, and they stood together in awkward silence and watched while Hopper smoothed the sweat-frizzed curls away from El’s face. 

Hopper sighed, and the sound was heavy in the stillness of the cabin. He bent to press a kiss into El’s hair, and Will grabbed Mike’s elbow to pull him out into the living room. It was a testament to how tired Mike was that he went without protest, but as soon as they were out of the bedroom he started to pace nervously in the open space behind the couch. Will sat down at the table, suddenly exhausted. 

El’s bedroom door creaked when Hopper closed it gently behind him as he joined them. He leaned back against it, one hand clasped over his eyes, thumb and middle finger rubbing at his temples. 

“Well?” Mike said when the silence grew too uncomfortable to ignore. 

Hopper groaned warningly and looked at Mike from underneath his hand. “Well what?”

“She needs help!” Mike hissed, gesturing violently with one hand. Will was impressed he’d managed to keep his voice down. 

“I’m well aware,” Hopper said dryly, pushing off of the door and crossing to the fridge where he took out a beer, popped the tab, and downed half of it in three long gulps.

Mike’s brows drew down as he frowned. “So what are we going to do?”

“How about I get on the phone and make a doctor's appointment?” Hopper asked sarcastically. “Or we could put her in the blazer and take her to the ER. Hell, why don’t we just cut out the middleman and drive her up to Pennhurst ourselves, since that’s where they’ll send her!”

“We can’t just leave her like that!” Mike protested, his voice rising. Will watched as both his hands clenched into fists. 

Hopper slammed the half-empty beer can down on the counter. “And we can’t just take her to a hospital. They’d have her committed faster than any of us could blink, and you know damn well that she’d never forgive either of us for letting that happen to her - and that’s assuming she doesn’t just bring the place down around her. So if you have any other ideas I’m all ears.”

Mike was quiet for a moment, his eyes roving around the room as he thought, until he finally said, “What about Owens?” but Will doubted that was an option. 

“It’d be too close to raising a red flag,” Hopper said with a shake of his head. “He’s got no family here, no reason to come back. We keep in touch but there’s not much he can do over the phone.”

Mike didn’t seem to have a reply to that. His knuckles had gone white again, and there was a long moment where Will knew he desperately wanted to take a swing at something and was trying to talk himself out of it. 

With a deep sigh, Hopper kicked out the chair across from Will and lowered himself into it. Will watched as he sipped at his beer, watched as Mike clenched and unclenched his fists, watched while they both stared into the middle distance wracking their brains for something, _anything_ , they could do for the girl they all loved. 

Finally, Will had to satisfy his curiosity. “So… what happened?”

“Max told you what happened,” Mike said with a little more force than was necessary.

Will did his best not to make a face, but couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes. “Not at school,” he said gently. “Saturday. Or Sunday. She was weird all week. Things like this don’t just… happen because of nothing. I know they don’t.” There was a weight behind those words he hadn’t meant to put there, but he was too tired to be embarrassed about it. “Something got in her head. Maybe if we figure out what it was we’ll have a better idea of how to help her, and how to stop it from happening again.”

Hopper sat his beer down and leaned his elbows on the table, lacing his hands together and propping his chin on them. Across the room, Mike’s face was doing a peculiar thing: his whole expression was slack and pale, but there were bright spots of color high on his cheeks, and these two things coupled together made him look a little like he wanted to be sick. His mouth was working soundlessly but nothing was coming out. 

“It’s not my place,” Hopper said just when it looked like Mike was finally ready to speak, “but before he moved Sam was able to gather a good portion of El’s records from the lab. Something… happened, on Sunday, and she finally decided it was time to take a look at them. Anymore than that you’re gonna have to hear from her.”

Will absorbed Hopper’s words but his eyes were still fixed on Mike, who eventually opened his mouth to ask the question Will was afraid to have answered. “Records of what?”

Hopper had taken a crumpled, half-empty carton of cigarettes out of his pocket, and he flipped it end over end between the fingers of his right hand while he thought about his answer. “Experiments mostly,” he said eventually. “Medical records.”

Mike made a pained, unhappy noise in the back of his throat and turned to pace away from where they were sitting at the table. He stopped in front of the little sideboard where the record player was situated, milk crates of vinyls stacked beside it which he started rifling through nervously, not even looking down at what his hands were doing. “So what are we going to do?” he asked again, and the same determination was there, the same resolve, but Will could feel deep down in his bones that this time is was mostly bravado. Mike was floundering. 

“We’re not gonna do anything,” Hopper said while he tapped out a cigarette. “You and Will are going to get your backpacks out of my car, you’re gonna get back in the station wagon, and then you’re both going home.”

“We’re - what? No!” Mike exclaimed. “I’m not leaving-”

“Yeah you are,” Hopper cut him off, rising from the table. “She needs to rest, and you need to go home and calm down. You’re too close to the situation, and I’m too tired to play nice with the hairpin trigger on your temper.”

“Fine,” Mike said hotly. “But I’m coming back tomorrow.”

“Not until after school, you’re not,” Hopper said as he opened the front door and made a shooing gesture. “Someone’s gotta get her homework.”

Will stood, stretched, and glanced backwards at the closed bedroom door before following Hopper. Mike stood for a long moment, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, then crossed back to El’s closed door, shooting Hopper a dark look as if daring him to protest. 

“Sonnuva bitch,” Hopper muttered, rubbing tiredly at his eyes as Mike pushed the door open. 

“You should go easy on him,” Will said gently. “He’s… actually handling this pretty well.”

Hop gave a snorting, little laugh. “This is him handling it well?”

Will shrugged, and shoved his hands into his pockets. “He hasn’t taken a swing at anyone yet.”

“He wants to.”

The only response Will had to that was a nod. 


	5. Chapter 4: the stillness of remembering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy balls you guys, I can't count. There are 8 chapters here, not 7! So... that's good for y'all I guess. 
> 
> This one is a looooot of character study and exposition. Enjoy!

After Mike had said his goodbyes, or whatever it was he felt he couldn’t leave without telling El, he and Will walked back to the station wagon in complete silence - a silence which continued through the drive to Will’s house, and only grew awkward when Mike turned the car off and took the keys out of the ignition. They sat quietly for a few long minutes while Mike passed the keys back and forth in his hands, and when Will finally got up the courage to look at his friend what he saw in Mike’s face was heartbreaking. It was hard sometimes, to remember that Mike wasn’t really any older than the rest of them - was younger than Will, in fact, by a month. Their encounters with the Upside Down had changed all of them in different ways. Losing El had broken something open inside of Mike, and when that had happened he’d neatly and summarily packed away his childhood and taken it upon himself to be their protector, their planner - their paladin. 

But the sixteen-year old boy sitting beside Will in the driver’s seat didn’t look anything but lost, and Will felt his own heart breaking a little at the sight.

“How did you know?” Mike asked and even though his voice was quiet, barely above a whisper, it was so loud in the car that Will almost jumped. “How did you know where she was?”

Will felt a brief spike of panic, but it was wholly and completely his own and that was enough to let him breathe through it and force it back down. It was easier to answer now that is was just him and Mike. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I just… did. It was like there was something inside of me, some - compass, or something, that just…”

“Knew,” Mike finished. “Knew it was her and not you.”

“Yeah,” Will said slowly, shooting Mike a questioning glance. 

Still fidgeting with the keys, Mike propped his left elbow on the driver’s door and leaned his head against his hand. “Sometimes I think I can tell when she’s watching,” he said slowly. “I have to be looking for it, but when I know she’s there, when I’m paying attention, it’s almost like-like…”

“Electricity,” Will offered as the hair on the back of his neck stood up and a shiver worked its way down his spine. “Like before a lightning storm.”

He was all too familiar with the feeling. 

At Will’s admission Mike sat up straight in the driver’s seat, frowning down at the keys in his lap while his face colored and when Will realized why he couldn’t keep himself from laughing. 

“Michael Wheeler,” he said in disbelief. “Are you jealous?”

“No,” Mike said much too quickly, the color in his face deepening. “Just wondering why.” Will’s eyebrows were still trying to climb into his hairline, his smile brightening, and something about the expression forced Mike to admit, “And… maybe it might be nice to be able to find her when I’m freaking out about her up and disappearing on me again.”

Mike had never voiced that particular fear out loud before, but the fact that he was talking about it at all told Will now wasn’t the time to press him. Instead he said, “You want to be able to know where your girlfriend is at all hours of the day?”

Mike frowned again. “It sounds creepy when you say it like that.”

“That’s because it’s creepy, Mike.”

“You can do it!”

“Okay, one,” Will retorted, “No I can’t. It’s never happened before today, and it’s not happening now. Two, it was probably more her than me, and three - _I’m not her boyfriend_.”

Mike laughed, but the sound was small and humorless - almost hopeless. “I’m just… really fucking sick of waking up in the middle of the night and feeling like I won’t be able to breathe until I see her again.”

Another admission Mike had never made out loud, another problem for Will to pack away until Mike felt safe enough to be vulnerable. 

“Remember sleep?” Will asked instead. “I miss sleep.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be complaining about it to you, huh?” Mike said, trying - and utterly failing - to make his tone light. 

“Suffering is relative,” Will replied immediately, relieved that Mike was still willing to talk to him about these sorts of things. “And it’s not a contest.”

Mike nodded, and Will felt compelled to add, “And if it was El would be winning. But I’d still be smoking the rest of you.”

Silence descended again, and then Mike said something that Will had been too afraid to even think. “You don’t think - whatever’s happening to her, you don’t think it’s the Ups-”

“No,” Will said quickly as his heart began to race. “No. The gate’s closed.”

These words didn’t seem to comfort Mike at all.

“You wanna come in?” Will asked. “Mom’s probably making dinner. You could stay.”

Mike shook his head. “Nah, I think I’m gonna go for a drive or something.”

Will asked if he wanted company, but Mike’s silence was all the reply he needed. 

“She’s not alone,” Will said before he climbed out of the car. “We’re here, and we’ll find a way to help her. And… you’re not alone either.”

“I know,” Mike said softly in reply. 

Will wasn’t sure Mike did, but kept his peace as he closed the passenger door. He stood on the porch for awhile, watching as the station wagon made a three-point turn in the drive and pulled away. It wasn’t late, and the day had been sunny, but the biting chill of winter hung in the air, and the furnace was still running full blast inside, so Will retreated to the warm, well-lit depths of his mother’s house. There was hamburger helper on the stove, and Joyce was curled up on one corner of the couch, smoking a cigarette. 

“Hey baby,” she said, glancing away from the rerun of M.A.S.H. on the TV. “How was school?”

“Fine,” Will replied, dropping his backpack in a chair at the table and grabbing a plate from the cabinet. “Did the chief call you?”

“No,” his mom replied, and Will could tell by the tone of her voice that she’d sat up. His suspicions were confirmed when he heard the whisper of socked feet on the linoleum floor of the kitchen. The cigarette smoke clung to her like a coat, but she’d put it out the instant he’d walked in - she didn’t smoke in the house anymore when he was home, not since the asthma had started. He didn’t need to look at her to see how her shoulders had hitched when she asked, “Everything okay?”

Will shrugged out of his jacket and dropped it on top of his bag before picking up his plate again. “Something happened with El,” he said as he served himself. “You should call him.”

He put the plate down to dig around in the utensil drawer, looking for a fork, but froze when Joyce put her arms around his shoulders and hugged him close. 

“What about you?” she said. “Are you okay?”

Her question cracked the last of Will’s resolve and he turned to throw his arms around her, clinging to her tightly as he buried his face in her hair and started sobbing. It wasn’t the first time he’d done this - not by a long shot - and it wouldn’t be the last, but he was tired, and scared, and so worried about El he couldn’t even think. He’d felt her panic, her terror and helplessness, and he’d spent the last few years of his life trying to push down his own memories of the same feelings. 

They were always there, always waiting, and now, with his mother’s arms wrapped tightly around him - safe, because she was safe, because she’d come for him and she’d driven that thing out of him and she would never let anything happen to him - Will let himself fall apart. She held him tighter when his shoulders started heaving, and lowered him to the kitchen floor when his knees gave out. She sat with him while he cried and held him tightly against her like she’d done when he was little, when Hopper had brought him back from the dead, when the Mind Flayer had left him; and at some point Will scrubbed the back of his arm across his eyes, still crying, and said, “I’m so scared, Mom.”

“I know, sweetheart,” she said as she rocked him. “I know. I’m here.”

She didn’t ask him what had happened, didn't press him for details; instead she just sat with him until he’d cried himself out and helped him to the couch when he was done. She covered him with a crocheted quilt, and brought him his plate and a glass of water. Combing her fingers through his hair, she pushed it back and leaned down to kiss his forehead. “Let me know if you need anything,” she said, and Will nodded. 

Part of him wanted to be embarrassed by the coddling; he didn’t know any other sixteen-year old boys who let their mom treat them like a sick child - but then again he also didn’t know anyone else who’d spent a week in a nightmarish hellscape being hunted by a monster, so he let himself be comforted. When she cupped his cheek, smiling, he leaned into the touch. 

“Love you, baby,” she said before her hand fell away. 

He couldn’t stop himself from smiling back, even if it felt tired and forced. “Love you too. Thanks Mom.”

Joyce dialed the cabin, then pulled the receiver into the kitchen with her, out of both sight and earshot. Will thought about turning the TV down to eavesdrop, but in the end he just sat quietly and ate his dinner, too tired to even pay attention to the show. His mom was still on the phone when the credits were rolling, her voice a quiet murmur from the kitchen table, and she was still on the phone when Will finally wandered in to put his plate in the sink. Her face was drawn, features pinched with worry, and she was chewing nervously at the thumbnail on her right hand, and unlit cigarette perched between her first and second finger. She smiled tightly at Will’s mumbled, “Goodnight,” and then he shut himself in his room and began the familiar, tiresome exercise of trying not to have another breakdown over his complete inability to sleep. 

He tried; he always tried, but laying in bed in the dark too exhausted to sleep was its own special hell, and eventually he switched on the bedside lamp and grabbed up one of several sketchbooks laying on the floor. There was a hard pencil case there too, full of colored pencils and graphites in different softnesses, and Will picked out what he wanted and put pencil to paper to exorcise the image he couldn’t get out of his head: El curled up between the two trees - dark, heavy lines for the tension in her shoulders and limbs, a soft, smudged cloud for the leaves around her feet, and the way her curly ponytail had tipped over one shoulder. 

He did the same drawing three or four times, until he felt he’d gotten it right (or as good as it was going to get) and by then it was nearly 5am and Will gave up the ghost. He’d slept a little, slumping over in his bed when exhaustion had taken him, but nightmares had come - as they always did - and so he shuffled into the kitchen, put the coffee on, and tried to psych himself up for the rest of the week. 

His efforts would be in vain, because the rest of the week was awful. They’d been at school for all of an hour before Mike, who looked like hell when Will had seen him in the hallway before class, had run his mouth off to a teacher and landed himself in detention for three days. 

“One for each time he said ‘fuck’,” Dustin told Will during lunch. 

Mike, sitting across the table from Dustin, had done nothing but glower into his turkey sandwich. 

Julie had given him a little grief for never coming back to the auditorium after disappearing, but for the most part she’d just been concerned - concerned for him, concerned for El and all the rumors that were flying around about what had happened. She’d asked him some fretful questions, apologizing all the while like she thought he was going to snap at her (which he’d never done in the two years they’d been friends). In a strangely comforting way, she’d always reminded Will a little bit of his mother; all nervous energy and fierce concern very thinly veiled behind the assuredness that she could help if only she understood. 

He’d done his best to assuage her fears, but eventually he’d had to use his favorite phrase - “I don’t really wanna talk about it anymore right now.” She’d been understanding, and had dropped the conversation with one last affirmation, telling him he could come to her - that any of his friends could come to her - if they needed anything, and there’d been no nice way to tell her she couldn’t possibly help, so Will had just returned the fervent hug she’d given him and let himself relax into the comfort of it. 

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday all passed in the same strange, terrible limbo. Will was so tired he had no trouble falling asleep but the nightmares were worse than usual and with every dream he experienced he grew more and more certain they weren’t entirely his own. Max was more snide than usual, her words short and sarcastic to the point that even Lucas couldn’t contend with her, and Lucas, usually even-keeled, had no patience for anything. He lost his temper left and right, in cutting, dismissive ways that nearly had the party tiptoeing around him the same way they tiptoed around Mike. Dustin went into overdrive with his signature mishmash of realistic optimism, bemoaning grades and class projects, asking everyone about homework, what they’d had for dinner, whether or not they were excited about Critters and what they thought about seeing Highlander again, while gently (if obviously) prompting Mike about El without actually asking him any questions. 

Mike was the worst. His temper, which seemed to have come to a head on Wednesday morning when he’d earned his detentions, was gone so fast the rest of the party felt it like whiplash. Left in its place was a quiet, almost hopeless sort of diligence: he came to school, he collected El’s homework, he served his sentence, he spent his afternoons and evenings at the cabin, and for the first time in as long as any of them could remember he had nothing to say about any of it. 

Will had thought himself at capacity for worry but he’d been sorely mistaken. He ended up skipping his last two classes on Friday, sick of having to watch his friends try, and fail, to pretend that things were normal, tired of looking Mike in the eye and knowing there was no way to comfort him. He biked to the outskirts of Hawkins, and then further, down the road they still called Mirkwood, past the place where he’d first seen the Demogorgon, past the road to his house, down to the turnoff that led to the quarry. He had to walk his bike the last quarter mile because the path through the woods was too cluttered, but he did it without a second thought. (He’d left his bike, that November evening, and had never really shaken the feeling that maybe he could have gotten away if he’d had the presence of mind to do anything but run.)

He broke through the trees and out onto the disused gravel road just across from his favorite spot - the same ledge Mike had jumped from years ago, though Will had only heard the story once. No one liked to tell it. Leaving his bike in the dirt, he threw his backpack down on the rocky outcropping and dropped like a stone beside it, weary in a way that was so much more than physical. Crossing his legs, he leaned his elbows on his knees, put his chin in his hands and sat silently for a long time. 

Will had never been very extroverted, even before all the business with the Upside Down, but more and more of late he’d found himself craving solitude. Sometimes even being around his friends was too much, or being in the same house as his mom. The first time he’d come out to the quarry alone it had been out of some morbid curiosity to see the place they’d found his body, to imagine what had happened that night; another story he’d only heard once, from Dustin, who’d been the only one of them able to get any words out when Will had asked. (He’d left out the part where Mike had yelled at El, but Mike, honest to a fault even in his grief, had told Will about it later that same day when they’d been alone. Will had hugged him tightly, and Mike had returned the embrace, but he hadn’t cried like Will thought he might. Instead he’d just gotten angry.)

He couldn’t pinpoint when the curiosity had become a fixation. He knew it wasn’t healthy, this obsession with his own death, but it wasn’t something he could just put behind him. They’d pulled a fake body out of the water. Jonathan had planned his funeral, and then his family and friends had attended it. The whole town had thought his mother was crazy. 

He’d been sitting in that same spot, high above the quarry, the first time he’d dared to think that maybe things would have been better if he’d died in the Upside Down. It would have been easy to correct the mistake from his perch. It had been later that same day, biking home in the twilight and preparing to tell his mom they’d all been at Dustin’s, that he realized he didn’t particularly care anymore whether he lived or died. He’d died once already, and almost died a second time. The prospect didn’t frighten him anymore.

Acknowledging the fact had just made the bad thoughts louder. He could jump off the cliff, just like Mike had four years ago, only there wouldn’t be a superhero waiting to save him. He could ride his bike into traffic Monday morning on his way to school. There was a rifle in the shed, the bottle of painkillers in his mom’s medicine cabinet, the razor blades in the bathroom. 

It wasn’t that he wanted to die. He didn’t. For all the intrusive thoughts he’d been having, he’d never actively considered taking his own life. When he thought about it, and he did (all the time), he had a lot to live for. He wanted to watch the strange dance happening between Hopper and his mom. He wanted to be there for every phone call Jonathan made from New York so he could soak up all the stories his brother had about the city and imagine what it might be like to be there himself. He wanted to get a little tipsy with Dustin and Julie at the afterparty on opening night of _Oklahoma!_ then sit around with the other stage crew kids and smoke pot while they laughed about the leading roles (which Dustin would take with a good natured grain of salt, because he’d been cast as Will Parker, and his first kiss _ever_ had been with Candace Masters, the junior girl playing Ado Annie). 

He wanted to watch the sunlight streaming through Max’s red hair, setting it on fire while she talked about all she was capable of achieving - which was always so much less than she gave herself credit for. He wanted to watch Lucas succeed in a way their small town would never let him. He wanted to watch Mike and El move in together and get married and grow old. 

He didn’t want to die. 

A gust of wind blew so hard up the cliff face Will was forced to catch himself on his forearms or risk bashing the back of his head open. It smelled distinctly of water and fresh earth and snow, and it numbed his cheeks and nose as it swept over him, the last clinging vestiges of winter. When he tried to stand his legs had gone numb, and he nearly fell on his face twice trying to walk before he realized the best course of action was to stand, knees locked like some bizarre life-sized doll, and wait for the feeling to come back into his feet and legs. While he was standing still he realized how dark the sky had grown, how the temperature had dropped and the wind had picked up. It was well after the end of his mother’s shift at Melvald’s. 

He biked home in a weird sort of stasis. Joyce was probably going to ream him for being out so late without calling, but he’d wave it away by saying they’d lost track of time while playing a board game and her anger would dissipate like so much dust in the wind. She could never stay mad at him for long. 

The house was dark when he pushed the front door open, but there was a light on over the stove in the kitchen, and he could smell cigarette smoke. When he rounded the corner he saw his mom sitting at the table, her forehead in one hand and a Camel Light in the other. Her purse and car keys were on the table. 

“Mom?” he said as he dropped his backpack in the doorway. “Did you just get home? 

Joyce started, wiping hastily underneath her eyes, which were watery and red-rimmed when she looked at him. “Will, hey,” she said, making an attempt at a smile. “Yeah, I, um, I stopped by the cabin to give Hop a hand. Have you eaten?”

“Mrs. Sinclair fed us,” he said, the lie tumbling easily from his lips. “Are you okay?”

The fake smile faltered and fell. “Not really.”

On this front, at least, they were always honest with each other. 

She put out the smoke, and Will wrapped his arms around her shoulders in a brief, tight hug. Her hands clutched at his arms. 

When he pulled away, Will asked, “What’d Hop need help with?” even though he knew and dreaded the answer. 

His mom sighed. “El’s not… she’s having a hard time.”

“Yeah,” he breathed, eyes on the floor. His gaze caught the laundry basket sitting on top of the washing machine, just visible through the open back door. It was full of summery blouses and oversized sweaters, bedsheets and uniforms. No wonder the house was cold. 

Joyce followed his gaze and smiled sadly. “Thought I could do some laundry for them.”

“Have you eaten?” Will asked instead. 

She made a vague gesture, something that said _worry about it later_ , but he was already pulling the fridge open, rooting through what they had. There was some leftover pasta, a broccoli rice casserole that was probably past its expiration date judging by the smell, and the makings of breakfast: eggs, ham that could be fried, jam for toast (if they had bread, and he was pretty sure they did).

So Will made breakfast for dinner, and ate some scrambled eggs himself even though he really wasn’t hungry, and then together they sorted the Hopper house’s laundry and got it started. The easy company seemed to do the both of them good, and for the first time in a long time Will was able to fall asleep, cuddled under his mom’s arm on the couch as they watched a rerun of The Tonight Show. 

He hoped it was a good sign that his nightmares seemed to be his own for the first time since Tuesday, but Saturday dawned cool and clear, and Mike and El were still persona non grata - El because she couldn’t be persuaded to leave her bed, and Mike because he refused to leave her. They spent a tense evening sprawled out in Lucas’ living room, trying to enjoy a game of Risk but mostly just lost in their own thoughts until Lucas pushed the board across the carpet in frustration, disrupting the pieces and causing all three of the other players to shout in dismay. 

“This is stupid!” he said. “We’re just sitting here!”

“I mean if you wanna show up at the cabin so Mike can yell at you,” Max said with a tight smile, “be our guest.”

“She makes a very good point,” Dustin said to Lucas’ disparaging look. 

“So our only other option is doing nothing?” Lucas countered hotly. He shook his head. “No. That’s bull. That’s quitting. We’re not quitters. Not when the party’s in trouble.”

“Also a very good point,” Dustin muttered to the room at large.

“So what do we do?” Max demanded. “Mike’s doing his ‘ _I am an island_ ’ impersonation and El’s basically a vegetable - don’t make that face,” she said, shooting both Will and Dustin a glare. “This isn't the Upside Down. We’re not fighting monsters from another dimension.”

“There’s gotta be something we can do,” Lucas said desperately. “I don’t feel right just sitting here, and I know none of you do either.”

Max’s voice was harsh. “Well if you’ve got any ideas we’re all ears!”

The silence that followed was disheartening, until Will said, “Actually…”

***

It wasn’t a plan, precisely - at least, not the way Lucas would have had it (the way Mike would have been able to make it work). What Will had come up with more closely resembled a science experiment in that he had a goal he wanted to achieve, and several ideas he wasn’t really sure were going to work. He felt a little silly explaining his would-be hypothesis to the party, but watching their faces change from poorly concealed sadness to something that almost looked like hope was enough to let Will believe there was actually a chance. 

The only thing they hadn’t been able to decide was when to enact their plan. Max had been right on the nose about Mike’s bad temper, which had morphed yet again to something dangerously close to what it had been the year El had been gone - and it made Will impossibly sad when he realized that was probably exactly how Mike was feeling. 

She’d improved somewhat over the weekend, enough that Hopper - who’d taken the rest of the week off - had begrudgingly gone back to work on Saturday afternoon. Mike had spent the entire weekend with her; a quiet, miserable affair he recounted to Will Monday morning before the warning bell in clipped half-truths that Will had to parse out for himself. The situation had evolved, it seemed, into something that was both better and worse. 

It wasn’t that El was incapable of leaving her bed; she didn’t seem to want to. She just didn’t see the point in it. 

She didn’t see the point in anything. 

“I don’t know what to do,” Mike said, leaning against his locker and looking more lost than Will had ever seen him. He had his backpack slung over one shoulder but he hadn’t bothered to exchange any books. 

All Will could do was shrug. “Maybe you can’t do anything,” he said gently. 

Mike shook his head, balking, just as Will had known he would, then stalked off with a terse, “See ya,” before Will could say anything else, and that was when he made his decision. 

That decision was cemented by the terrible oppressiveness of homeroom. “Miss Hopper is absent again, I see,” Ms. Chandler observed blandly - though not maliciously - when she gazed around the classroom as she was taking attendance. The other students tittered with laughter, while Will watched Dustin chew nervously at his bottom lip and Max slouched lower in her seat, El’s vacant desk sitting between them like a perverse place marker.

“I’m going,” Will said to his friends when the bell finally rang. “Tell Lucas.”

Dustin groaned. “Oh my god, Mike is going to be such a baby about this.”

“Mike can go fuck himself,” Max snapped with uncharacteristic malice. Will’s eyes flew wide, Dustin’s face mirroring the expression, and Max’s scowl softened. “She’s our friend too, okay?” she said a little more gently. “If he wants to push us away, whatever, but he doesn’t get to do it for her just because she can’t stop him - which she would, by the way.”

“We’re not gonna let that happen,” Dustin reminded. “We’ve got a course of action, even if it’s not a super clear one. Lucas is going to talk to Mike-“

“And get his head bitten off,” Max muttered under her breath. 

“-and we,” Dustin continued, unperturbed, “are going to do everything we can to remind El that she is a treasured member of the party and we value her presence in our lives and want it to continue. And by ‘we’ I mean mostly Will because he’s a wreckless madman who doesn’t want backup. Are you sure you don’t want backup?”

Will shook his head. “Maybe later. Right now I just wanna… talk to her.”

“Solo recon,” Dustin said with a nod. “Got it. We’ll keep the comms on. Good luck.”

Max, who had her arms crossed tightly, said, “Tell her we miss her.”

Will hugged her on impulse. “I will.”

“Go man, go!” Dustin shouted excitedly, clapping Will on the shoulder and shoving him toward the front door. Will needed no further encouragement. 

He made a stop at his locker for the duffel he’d stashed that morning - the first time he’d used his locker that semester, since he never bothered to switch out books anymore - and then he was off. The hallways were packed with students jostling each other as they made their way between classrooms, and Will slipped easily between them, already feeling uneasy. The guilt creeping up on him had nothing to do with cutting class and everything to do with lying to his mother about his whereabouts, but of course he didn’t feel guilty enough to be honest with her. It was easier for her, this way. She’d only worry, and she already worried so much. 

It was a long bike ride out to the cabin, and though he hated to use it Will took a dose from his inhaler before setting off. Between that and the first semi-decent sleep he’d gotten in months he had a fairly pleasant trip, even with the additional awkward bulk of the duffel bag. He wasn’t sure anything he’d packed would be of use, because the usefulness depended so deeply on El, but he’d brought every resource that had helped him (along with some things he thought would help her), and he’d always taken a great deal of comfort in knowing he’d done his best. 

The morning had been sunny again, and unusually warm for March, and he worked up a decent sweat, his lungs and legs both burning pleasantly. However, in the forty-five minutes it took him to make the ride (because he wasn’t hurrying; he never hurried) the sky grew cloudy and the wind picked up, bringing with it the smells of winter - cold and sleet and snow. His heart seized at what felt like a bad omen. El’s aversion to darkness and cold was stronger than his own, and he couldn’t help thinking just a little bit that the universe was giving the both of them a giant middle finger. 

He sent up a silent prayer to whatever benevolent being might be listening. He didn’t think his nerves could take another snowfall. 

The woods were unnaturally quiet where the road dead ended, but Will did his best not to dwell on the fears inspired by the silence. Still, he didn’t think anyone could blame him for walking a little faster, pushing his bike along because the trail was too awkward with the added weight of his extra bag. The Blazer had been absent at the trailhead, just as he’d expected, but knowing Hopper wasn’t waiting at the end made him walk all the more quickly.

He was beginning to suspect he’d walked too long or somehow taken a wrong turn when he finally came upon the cabin, and not for the first time Will was grateful he had almost no memory of the first time he’d been there. Just when you thought you’d somehow gotten lost, and trees opened up, and there it was. He left his bike at the end of the trail, stepped nimbly over the still-present tripwire, and made his way quickly but quietly up the front steps. 

He raised his closed fist for the secret knock, the woods pressing in at his back, and sighed in relief when he heard the locks click. The last time he’d seen El she hadn’t even known where she was, and despite Mike’s report that this was no longer the case part of Will had still been skeptical. He had no backup plan if she wasn’t coherent enough to let him in. 

The cabin was in it’s usual tidy state - Hopper was a surprisingly neat housekeeper when he wasn’t drunk and strung out on pills - and the remains of a fire was burning down in the stove. The cast iron was still hot, the main room warm and cozy against the chill lingering in the deep shade of the trees, but the only sound was the crackle and hiss of the embers, and El was nowhere to be seen. Her bedroom door, however, was ajar. 

“El?” Will called hesitantly as he put the duffel bag down on the couch. He shrugged his backpack off and dropped it beside the duffel, shouldering out of his coat and shuffling hesitantly toward the open door. There was no reply, but before he could reach the threshold she appeared in the doorway and Will’s heart stuttered in his chest. 

It wasn’t that she looked terrible, exactly. Her hair was clean, and braided back from her face - his own mother’s doing, he suspected - and she was wearing warm, comfy pajamas; a pale blue henley with a dark flannel shirt unbuttoned over it, gray sweatpants and thick black socks. Her eyes were shadowed, loose curls were frizzing around her hairline, and her expression was perfectly bland, which set alarm bells off in Will’s head. 

El was not a person who ever looked bland. Her resting face was something akin to startled wonderment, all wide eyes and softly clenched jaw, mouth closed and pursed. When she was mad, you could see it by the way her brow furrowed, her eyebrows drawing together as she frowned. When she was happy her whole face crinkled with the smile, her cheeks dimpling. She cried more than any person Will had ever met, and her bottom lip always trembled right before the tears started flowing, no matter what emotion had inspired the crying: anger or fear or happiness or helplessness. 

El was an open book. You didn’t have to know her well to be able to read what she was feeling, and that Will could find nothing in her face spoke volumes. 

They stared at each other, neither moving, until finally, moved by the growing awkwardness, he said, “Hey.”

El’s response was to turn back into her bedroom, her movements slow but purposeful. By the time Will reached the doorway she was pulling the covers up around her shoulders, her back to him. The curtains were still drawn, and there was a plate of fried eggs and Eggos, along with a glass of apple juice on the bedside table, all of it gone cold and untouched. 

Dropping his coat, Will retrieved the duffel bag and shuffled nervously through El’s open bedroom door, his heart in his throat. There was no way to know if any of his ideas would work, but he knew he owed it to her to try. 

_Well_ , he thought with a deep, sighing breath, _here goes nothing_.

“I, um,” he started awkwardly as he dropped the bag on the little chair by her desk. “I thought you might want some company besides Hop and Mike, and I brought some… some things for you.” He glanced up when he heard a rustling noise, but it was just El hiking the covers up to her chin. Will’s heart fell a little. “It’s nothing too exciting,” he continued as he started pulling things out of the duffel. “Just some stuff that always helps me when I’m not feeling good. Some paper and colored pencils, crayons, a couple of coloring books. Oh, Max gave me some stickers she bought last week that reminded her of you. There’s a little bit of Play-Doh, and some clay…” He’d paid for those last two things out of his own pocket. Art had always been his solace, and while he didn’t know if it could be hers he was willing to spend his very limited pocket money helping her explore. 

She still hadn’t stirred. He didn’t know if she was even listening, but he took another deep breath and went on, “There’s a book here, too - well a couple books actually-“ (More than a couple; six, in fact, because she read so voraciously that the last time Will had loaned her a stack of books she’d given all of them back a week later and demanded any sequels or other works by the same authors.) “- _Dune_ , and _The Once and Future King_ … and, um, there’s a book Doctor Owens gave me, and some pamphlets.” 

Will stopped again, and swallowed down the lump that was forming inexplicably in his throat. When he glanced up El had turned her head back to look at him, her gaze still as emotionless and impassive as before. He fumbled the brochures out of the book from where they’d been tucked in the back cover, and approached the bed. The book itself was a worn thing, with dog-eared pages and doodles in the margins, highlighted and underlined and annotated in Will’s tiny, cramped writing. It wasn’t what he’d ever call a page-turner (and had been written, in truth, for veterans, not children who’d experienced the levels of abuse and trauma he and El had both suffered), but it had been helpful when Will had thought himself beyond help, and the thing had almost turned into a journal. There were scraps of paper shoved between the pages, colorful little drawings in pencil and crayon where blank space allowed. Between the book and the pamphlets, which included grounding and mindfulness exercises that he’d found useful, and meaningless platitudes that he’d thought a little condescending, most days he could function like a semi-normal human being - or as close to one as he’d ever been. 

He wasn’t sure if she’d welcome the gesture, but Will took another chance and sat down on the edge of her bed, near the footboard. She’d laid her head down, once again facing away from him, and she didn’t stir when the mattress creaked under his weight. 

“There’s some good bits in the book,” he started again, “about… how going through something awful changes you. There’s a lot of stuff from soldiers in Vietnam - that’s the war Hopper fou-”

“I know,” she broke in, her voice quiet but insistent. 

“Yeah,” Will said, cringing at the misstep. “I don’t know why I thought you wouldn’t. Sorry.” She didn’t reply to the apology, so he went on, “There’s some exercises, too, to help when… when you’re hallucinating, or you don’t feel like you’re in your own body-”

“No.”

“-that can - what?” 

It had been so soft that for a moment Will wasn’t sure he’d even really heard anything, but then El twisted in the bed and for the first time since he’d walked in the cabin there was something in her expression. He couldn’t read it, didn’t know what emotion was hiding behind her wide, sad eyes, but there was something vulnerable there when she said, again, “No.”

He wanted so badly to push. There would be a time in the next few days when it would be necessary - he could feel it coming like a thunderstorm - but right now she was too busy tamping down on her emotions to see how open and raw they were. It was like trying to press a stack of paper towels over a bone-deep wound that needed stitches. Instead he set the leaflets on her bedside table, using the book to weigh them down, and said, “That’s okay. We, um… we can talk about it later. They really help you feel better though - or they helped me anyway-”

“Why?” she broke in again.

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging even though she wasn’t looking at him. “I guess there’s some science behind it, but even if there’s not, it - they… they really did help.”

There was a long moment of silence before she said, “Not how. Why?”

“Why?” WIll echoed, feeling grossly out of his depth and wondering if maybe he shouldn’t have waited for Mike. Mike always seemed to know what she was thinking. “I don’t understand. Why what?”

“Why better?” she asked softly. 

“El,” he said gently. “I don’t… I don’t know what you’re asking me.”

There was a long pause where he thought she’d decided she was done talking, and he sighed, rubbing his sweaty palms anxiously across the grass-stained knees of his jeans. He was just about to stand when she said, “Why get better?” Her voice had taken on that curious, flat quality again, but there was something so deeply defeated hiding behind it that Will’s heart broke a little. “There’s no better,” she said. “Still think it, still… see it and feel it. Still there. I’m still there. I can’t forget, ever.”

“I know,” Will said gently, pushing down the despair that wanted to rise at his own unforgettable memories - the darkness of the Upside Down, the slow but steady pull of the Mind Flayer’s influence. When no more words came, when he didn’t know what to do to comfort her (because it was true, all of it; there was no forgetting, and there was no concrete end that meant you were “better”, that you no longer felt used up and broken), he did the only thing he could think to do, and reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder. She didn't react at first - didn’t flinch, didn’t shrug him off, didn't ask him to stop touching her - so Will said, “I’m sorry,” squeezed her shoulder, and was about to pull away when she shifted under the blankets, and one arm snaked out so she could clutch desperately at his fingers, just like she had in class a week earlier. 

“Well,” he said when she didn’t let go, thinking of a conversation he’d had with Mike almost three years ago. “I guess we’ll just have to be miserable together.”

Her grip tightened when he tried to pull his hand away, and she turned again, her gaze sad and plaintive. “Stay?” she said softly. “Please?”

“Okay,” Will replied, but her grip tightened again when he tried to pull away. 

“Here,” she said. “Stay here.”

Will blushed in spite of himself, but like Mike, like all of them, he was powerless to deny her, so he kicked off his shoes and stretched out beside her, rolling so that they were back to back when she finally let go of his hand. 

“Thank you,” she murmured, and together they drifted. 

***

Will woke suddenly from a deep, dreamless sleep and was so disoriented that he almost rolled off the narrow, cramped twin bad that now had not two, but three bodies occupying it. The low, murmuring voice that had woken him ceased and a large, warm hand gripped his shoulder to keep him from falling, and Will was instantly soothed. He knew that touch. 

“Mike?” Will said blearily, rubbing at his sleep-crusted eyes. “Whu’time’sit?”

“A little after four,” Mike answered after glancing at his watch. 

“What?” Will said, alarmed. “No, that’s - that would mean I’ve been asleep for-”

“Six hours,” El said quietly, her voice muffled. Will rolled over to look at her, wriggling around to keep himself from falling off the bed again, and the sight that greeted him melted his heart a little. It turned out it wasn’t El’s back he’d been pressed against when he’d woken up, but Mike’s hip and thigh. Mike was laying back against the mixed pile of stuffed animals and old pillows that occupied most of the real estate near the headboard, his knee bent so one socked foot was on the bed, the other resting on the floor. El was laying curled between his legs with her face pressed into his stomach, both arms wrapped tightly around his waist and a stuffed bear wedged awkwardly under her arm, behind Mike’s back. Mike had one hand in her hair, and the other was resting against her back holding an open copy of _The Crucible_. 

Will couldn’t help but feel he was intruding. He struggled into a sitting position - someone had thrown a quilt over him - and swung his legs over the side of the bed, rubbing fitfully at his eyes as he said, “I’m gonna-” but before he could get the word “go” out of his mouth a small hand buried itself in his sleeve. 

“Stay,” El said to him, just as she had that morning. She wasn’t looking at him, and he gazed at the side of her face for a long time, silently willing her to open her eyes, but it never happened. Her face stayed mostly buried in the overwashed cotton of Mike’s most recent hoodie, somehow devoid of any emotion despite the quiet desperation in her voice. If not for the hand gripping his shirt, Will wouldn’t even have realized she’d spoken.

Before Will could reply, Mike’s hand closed over El’s where it was laying on his sleeve and gently pried it off. He watched out of the corner of his eye as their fingers laced together, and Mike drew her hand up to his mouth to place a long, lingering kiss against the back of her palm. “No one’s going anywhere,” Mike said easily, rubbing his cheek against their clasped hands. “I’m hungry, though. Will, you wanna help me make some sandwiches?”

“Sure,” Will answered, trying to shake off his own discomfort as he rose from the bed, completely unable to ignore the way El curled into herself as Mike crawled out from under her. 

“You want ham or turkey, El?” Mike asked, and when she made no reply he said, “Ham it is then.”

Will followed him out of the bedroom with one last glance over his shoulder at El. She cut a pitiful form, curled up beneath the blankets with her teddy bear now tucked into one armpit. 

The silence in the open living room would have been deafening, if not for the fire crackling in the Franklin stove. (Will remembered it had burnt down to embers when he arrived; Mike must have stoked it when he’d come over). The air around them was tense. 

“Ham or turkey?” Mike asked as he was fishing in the fridge. 

“I can make mine,” Will replied sleepily as he plopped down at the table. 

“I’m making a stack,” Mike said tersely. “Ham or turkey?”

“I don’t know,” he replied with a shrug. “Either’s fine.”

“We all get ham, then.”

Mike worked in silence, slathering plain white bread with mustard before slapping slices of ham and swiss cheese between the pieces of bread, and it took Will a lot longer than he was proud of to realize the tension in the room was pouring off of Mike, and not inherent to the situation. His shoulders where hitched up around his ears, his movements jerky and uncontrolled: he was mad. 

“Did Lucas find you after school?” Will asked, already knowing the answer. 

Lucas had volunteered himself for the dangerous job of fielding Mike’s temper. For as much shit as they gave him, Mike was actually fairly predictable. His fuse was short, but most of the time that just meant he didn’t stay mad for too long. His three detentions aside, he’d kept a lid on his anger in a way that was both impressive and horrifying, and the longer he stewed the more convinced Will became that when he finally lost his temper - which was inevitable - he’d do something they’d all regret. It felt a little manipulative, but Lucas had agreed it needed to be done, and so to that end he’d cornered Mike after the last bell and killed two birds with one stone: he’d laid out Will’s plan, and given Mike an outlet that wouldn’t get him in trouble. It wasn’t fair to Lucas, but he wasn’t afraid to match Mike’s anger and push back, and that made him the best person for the job. 

Judging by Mike’s face, Lucas had succeeded with flying colors.

“Yep,” he said, popping the _P_ at the end of the word. 

Will sighed. “Did you go off on him?”

Mike slammed the cabinet over the sink after taking down a single plate. “What the fuck do you think?”

Will had a distinct aversion to being sworn at - some leftover sense memory from Lonnie drunkenly raging at him, or Jonathan, or his mom - and the fact that Mike had dropped the F-bomb so casually, and with such poorly concealed malice, said more about how he was feeling than words ever could. 

“He just wants to help,” Will replied gently. “We all do. You don’t always have to do everything alone, you know. It’s okay to-“

“Can we not do this right now?” Mike cut in sharply, shoulders hitching somehow higher. “I just- I just want to- Fuck!”

Mike’s voice trembled on the last word and he slumped sideways a little to lean against the fridge. Will was on his feet in an instant, but all he did was watch as Mike put the plate down and pressed the heels of both hands into his eyes. “Fuck,” he muttered to himself. “She doesn’t like mustard.”

“Here,” Will said, finally moving. Pulling the fridge open, he searched the contents before pulling out a bottle of ketchup, and a package of sliced american cheese. “She likes ketchup.”

Mike’s tired, glassy eyes strayed between the condiments Will was offering him and the other sandwich ingredients still out on the counter. There was a slight tremble in his hands when he finally took the offered items, and they stood close together, almost shoulder to shoulder, as Mike made one more sandwich - ham and american with ketchup, on the same white bread - but when he went to cut the stack of sandwiches in half he was shaking so badly he dropped the knife. It clattered onto the floor, but Will’s eyes were trained on Mike’s hand, which curled into a tight fist on top the counter. He wanted to say something - _it’s going to be okay_ , maybe, or _it’s fine, it’s just a sandwich_ , or _you can cry if you want to, I won’t tell anyone, I’ll even leave you alone if that’s what you need_ \- but there were no words forthcoming, so Will just grabbed a paper towel and picked up the knife, bending to wipe up the tiny smear of ketchup on the worn floorboards, and it was in that moment, with Will’s attention turned away, that Mike chose to unload.

“What if she doesn’t get better?” he said, voice shaking. “What if she doesn’t get better? What if she just… never gets out of bed again?”

Will knew Mike almost as well as he knew himself, so even though he wanted to reply, he kept his peace. Sometimes the best way to get Mike to talk was to simply give him a safe, quiet space to fill with all the words that seemed to crowd his mind, even when he was exhausted; even when he was sad and hopeless. Dropping the knife into the sink, Will grabbed another from the drawer and reached around Mike’s frozen form to slide the plate of sandwiches over on the counter so he could cut them up, all the while watching Mike out of the corner of his eye. Mike was chewing nervously on the chapped skin of his lips, both hands clenched into fists on the countertop, leaning forward with hunched shoulders. Will didn’t have to wait long. 

“I just - I keep having this dream,” Mike said, his eyes focusing on something Will could neither see nor hear. “I’m at Becky and Terry’s house with El, but… but no one else is there, and she’s sitting in her Mama’s rocking chair watching Wheel of Fortune - she fucking _hates_ Wheel of Fortune, and - and I’m trying to get her to leave, but she won’t get up, she won’t answer me, she… she won’t even look at me.” Mike paused, and pushed away from the counter to lean back against the fridge, running a hand nervously back through his hair before shoving both hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I don’t know what to do, Will,” Mike said, repeating a phrase Will had heard more in the last week than their entire friendship - Mike always knew what to do. “If she doesn’t get better, I don’t think - Will, I don’t think I can-”

“She’ll get better,” Will interrupted in sudden, selfish panic. He couldn’t bear to hear the end of that sentence said aloud, couldn’t face blatant verbal confirmation of the price Mike and El had paid for finding each other; that they were so entwined with each other they’d be together for the rest of their lives; that both their lives were fragile, fallible things over which they had very little control; the dangerous, almost unhealthy reality that one couldn’t truly live without the other - not anymore. The thought that such a thing could exist broke Will’s heart even as it made it sing. 

“She’ll get better,” he said again. “She’s the strongest person we know, and we’re not gonna let her face this alone. If she wants to get better, she’ll get better.”

“If she _wants_ to?” Mike breathed, incredulous, as he pushed away from the fridge to face Will, his brows furrowing. “What does that mean?”

Will sighed, and looked away, unable to stand the weight of Mike’s gaze. “It means what it means.”

Mike made an unhappy, _angry_ noise. “Will.”

“It means what it means,” Will repeated. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Look, we can… we can be there for her, and we can help her, and we can give her reasons to get better, but at the end of the day... “ He drew a deep breath, his eyes sliding sideways to look at Mike again. “At the end of the day, she’s… she’s got to want to get better. No one can force her.”

“Why wouldn’t she want to get better?” Mike asked with something close to panic. 

Will wanted to kick himself. “It’s - that’s… that’s not what I meant,” he said. “She just needs some time. And some love. And some proof that her life is worth something.” 

He shoved the plate of sandwiches at Mike, letting go before he was sure Mike had caught it, then grabbed the taller boy by the shoulders and turned him bodily around. “Go on then,” he said as he shoved Mike toward the bedroom door. “Go… wrap her up in your noodle arms and feed her bites of sandwich until she remembers you wanna have her babies or something.”

Mike paused in the doorway of the bedroom. He didn’t turn around, didn’t look over his shoulder, but Will could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “Shut up and come eat your damn sandwich.”

***

It wasn’t until that Thursday that something finally gave. 

They passed Tuesday and Wednesday much the same as Monday - Will cut class, biked out to the cabin, asked El if she felt like talking, then, when she didn’t reply, settled down to wait in the quiet of her room until something else happened. That something was usually Hopper coming home for lunch, or Mike appearing after school. Will had passed most of the time sketching, while talking quietly about anything that passed through his mind - his mom, usually, and sometimes Lonnie. A couple of times he’d put a record on, something soft from Hopper’s younger days (because that was all he had); the Byrds, and Mamas and the Papas, and just once Janis Joplin, though that album had been so depressing he’d only let it play through Side A. He’d dozed off more than a few times too, and El always seemed to know when he started nodding, no matter if she was facing him or the wall. She would shuffle sideways to make room for him on the narrow bed, and after the second time Will had stopped protesting. 

He wanted to be embarrassed - he really did - but just like that night not even a week gone where he’d fallen asleep under his mother’s arm, laying beside El he was sleeping so well, so deeply and dreamlessly, that he’d almost forgotten what it was to be physically tired. It wasn’t enough, of course - three or four solid hours here and there - but it was more consistent than any sleep he’d gotten since the Mind Flayer, and in the midst of everything that had been happening it was a small mercy he wasn’t going to take for granted. 

Still, Will wasn’t surprised when things went sideways in a way he never could have predicted. It seemed like every time he had finally settled into some routine his bad luck reared it’s cursed, ugly head, and it was his own fault if he was disappointed. He didn’t get to be normal; not before, not now, not ever.

He couldn’t have been asleep for more than an hour when he woke suddenly. He blinked, disoriented in the darkness, and it wasn’t until he felt the cool, shallow water under his bare feet that he realized where he was. It wasn’t dark at all, though there was no visible source of light. The water was barely deep enough to cover his toes, and was nearly the same temperature as the air around him - not cold, exactly, but nowhere approaching warm. He was alone. 

Will had been dreaming about this strange not-dark place for the better part of a year; not frequently, not with any real regularity, but enough that he was starting to suspect he was only partly dreaming - he always felt unusually lucid, but no matter how he thought and wished he’d never been able to make anything happen. Just once, he’d tried walking, but that had been a never-ending journey: no matter how far he’d travelled nothing had changed. He’d heard voices, occasionally, and seen smoky wisps of things that almost looked like figures, but no matter how far he walked, how long he stayed, he’d never seen another living thing-

-which was why he started, and nearly fell backwards into the water when he turned in a slow circle and found himself facing a bed; a very familiar bed, with a very familiar mound of blankets and a very familiar head of brown frizz just barely visible against the pillow. 

For a few moments he struggled with comprehension. He knew what he was seeing, _who_ he was seeing, but he didn’t know why. Why now, all of a sudden, was he dreaming about El? If he was dreaming about El, why wasn’t he dreaming about her as he remembered her best - someone quiet and unobtrusive, but alert, and with enough power of presence that she often dominated a room simply by occupying it. Why was he dreaming of the shell she’d become, exactly as he’d left her in the waking world, and why was he dreaming about her in this awful nothing place?

His own footfalls seemed to echo in the oppressive silence of the nothingness as Will approached the bed. The form under the covers shifted a little, but didn’t turn, and he came as close as he dared, stopping just shy of his knees touching the mattress. He stood there for a long time, still trying to fathom why this dream didn’t feel like a dream, why he was seeing his friend exactly as he’d seen her when he’d fallen asleep (laying in the bed beside him, back to back, still shifted to the right side of the mattress, leaving as much room for another person as she could). He reached out a hand, wanting to shake dream-El’s shoulder, but drew it back in sudden terror, dreading what would happen if he touched her.

The nest of blankets shifted again, and Will couldn’t help the gasp that tore from his throat - a gasp that echoed so loudly in the quietness of the place it might as well have been a scream. The noise seemed to startle whatever was hiding under the covers, and it moved restlessly, limbs flailing, as Will scrambled backwards, heart pounding in his chest. His feet got caught on each other and he sat down hard in the cool water, hands and feet splashing and he tried to push himself away, his lungs freezing in his chest, breath wheezing through the pinhole of his windpipe. He squeezed his eyes shut as the quilts and sheets fell away, terrified of what he would see - a demodog, Bob’s pale, dead face, the Mind Flayer - 

-but then a small, familiar voice called, “Will?” 

When he opened his eyes El was sitting up in bed, her hair a fuzzy halo where it had worked free of the braid she’d been wearing all week. She was looking at him with wide, worried eyes, her knuckles white where they’d fisted in the blankets, her expression more engaged and alert than Will had seen in nearly two weeks.

“What,” she said, then stopped as her lower lip started to tremble and her eyes flooded with tears. “How? Will, how? You shouldn’t - shouldn’t be here!”

She was struggling to untangle herself from the blankets as she all but fell out of the bed, her legs wobbling beneath her, weak after almost a week and a half with virtually no use. The second time she fell she didn’t bother to stand again and closed the distance between them on her hands and knees, her whole body shaking. “How?” she said again, reaching for his hands with both of hers and gasping when she made contact. She squeezed a few times, as if trying to make sure he was real, tears tracking down her cheeks, and then she looked him in the eye, squeezed his hands as tight as she could, and said, “Wake up.”


	6. Chapter 5: we'll meet on the edges soon, said i

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After this it's one more chapter and an epilogue, my darlings. Enjoy!

It wasn’t exactly like waking up from a dream, but it was close enough that it didn’t compound Will’s already panic-inducing anxiety. He jolted awake, suddenly aware of his physical body, still laying in the narrow twin bed beside El, and the first thing he registered was the burning ache in his lungs as they struggled to draw air through his closed throat. He caught a glimpse of El’s face, still streaming with tears, before she untangled herself from the blankets and darted off the bed, toward his backpack, where his inhaler was stowed in its customary place in the front pocket. She uncapped it, and didn’t even wait for his fumbling hands to take it - she shoved it into his mouth, said, “Breathe,” and triggered it. 

His lungs opened up, and Will took the inhaler from her for the second blast of steroid-medicated air. “Is it-” he wheezed, still panicked, before taking a third hit from the inhaler. “Is it - what _is_ that place? It’s not - you closed to gate, El, it can’t be-”

“Not the Upside Down,” she said, her voice quiet but firm. Leaning into him, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her cold, wet cheek to his. “Gate’s closed. It’s not the Upside Down. You’re safe.”

The words seemed to push air into his lungs in a way the inhaler hadn’t been able to, and Will grasped desperately at her arms, squeezing his eyes shut as tears of relief began to gather, willing himself not to break down the way he wanted to. He dug his fingers into her soft, overwashed flannel that somehow smelled of both El and Hopper - cigarettes and woodsmoke, mothballs and Old Spice and sweat and syrup. The smells were comforting, grounding, and slowly but surely Will calmed. El would never lie to him - she would never lie to any of them. If she said he was safe, he was safe. 

He took a deep, shuddering breath, and she sat back from him. Her crying had slowed, but hadn’t stopped, and Will gave her a morose smile as he reached for her hand. Touch had become so important to El that she sought it with the same unwavering faith a small child would from a loving parent. She wanted to hold hands, and curl up against her friends, and fall asleep feeling safe nestled close to another warm body that loved her. Will had seen her fall asleep on Mike, Hopper, and his own mother maybe half a dozen times, and on each of their friends at least once. He had fond memories of the terse, awkward way Mike had said, “Hold her hand, asshole,” to Lucas, when she’d been wedged between the two boys on the couch watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind and she’d opened her hand to Lucas. Max, sitting on the floor with Will and Dustin, had slapped his leg and repeated, “Hold her hand, asshole,” and Lucas had given in, his face flaming, but then El had beamed at him, and slouched down in the couch so she was well and truly buried between the two larger boys, and Lucas hadn’t seemed to mind much after that.

Her head tipped onto his shoulder, and he gripped her hand tighter. “So if it’s not the Upside Down,” he said slowly, desperate to understand, “then… what is it?”

“I don’t know,” El said softly. “It’s… somewhere in between. Not the Upside Down, but… not here.”

“So where is it?” Will demanded. 

“In between,” El said again.

Will made a frustrated noise. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” El said, frowning as her voice hardened. “It means in between. Not here, not there - in between.”

“You’ve been there before,” Will pressed, his words more statement than question. “It’s how you found-”

“You,” she said, nodding, before her face twisted into a frown. “Barb. Kali, and… and the demogorgon.”

“And Mike,” Will added, hating the way her face had closed off as she’d spoken. 

That tipped one corner of her mouth in a half-smile, but didn’t quite chase away the darkness hiding behind her bright eyes. She linked her arm through his and fell backwards into the pillows, dragging him with her where she curled into his side, her head still on his shoulder. They lay there in silence for a long time before El asked, “How long?”

Will shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “Maybe a year? I thought… I thought I was dreaming.”

El laced her fingers with his and squeezed. “Not dreaming.”

“How… how did I get there?” Will asked, squeezing back. “How do _you_ get there?”

El shrugged, and said, “I don’t know,” for a third time in not even as many minutes. “It’s… inside me, I think. Up here.” She tapped a finger against Will’s temple, and he shuddered. “Part of me,” she said. “Like the powers.”

Rolling to face her, his nose inches from her own, Will said, “Could you be pulling me in with you?” He was deeply bothered by the idea that he might be finding the place all on his own. 

El frowned, shrugged again, and said, “Maybe, but….” trailing off as her eyes strayed to something over Will’s shoulder. When he craned his head to look he found she was gazing at a framed photograph of her and Mike, taken at the Sophomore homecoming dance. 

“Has this happened to Mike?” he asked, facing her again. 

“No,” El said quickly. “Not this.”

“But something?” Will prompted. 

El shrugged again, and wouldn’t quite meet his eyes when she said, “We dream”

“You dream,” Will repeated, no quite comprehending. “You mean, like… together?”

She nodded, still not meeting his gaze. 

“About the in-between place?” Will prompted when she didn’t elaborate. 

This time she shook her head, and said, “About each other.”

Her words were frank, and there was no embarrassment in her voice, so it took Will a few moments to parse out what she meant. When he did, he pulled his hand out of hers, his face flaming, and rolled to face the ceiling again, hoping his expression was as blank as he wanted it to be. _Sex_ , his mind supplied in flashing red neon, the concept both as foreign and familiar as the idea of particle acceleration. It made sense in his mind, but only in some twisted, half-formed sort of way. Of course his friends would be discovering sex; they were the right age, some of them had been in loving relationships - to say nothing of the heady cocktail of hormones that puberty had forced on all of them. It was the natural progression of things, or so he’d been led to believe. He didn’t want to examine the fact that he had trouble associating himself with the concept; more than trouble, even - he was almost incapable. Sex meant closeness. Sex meant intimacy. Sex meant letting someone get to know you enough to want you, and the idea that anyone outside of the party could ever know him - really know him - was almost laughable. Who would believe him? And if they believed him, who would want him? Who would stay?

He still had a hard time feeling like himself most days. The Will Byers that Hopper had brought back to life in the tainted, toxic air of the Upside Down had been irrevocably changed from the boy who’d left the Wheeler house that chilly November evening. Whoever Will had become, he’d only just been coming to terms with himself when the Mind Flayer had taken all the remaining pieces, everything that was still familiar, still _himself_ , and scattered them into the wind. It had been more than two years, and Will was still trying to collect those pieces. He knew he’d be trying for the rest of his life. His mind and heart both rebelled at the thought of inviting someone into that disaster. How could he ever love someone else when he so desperately hated himself?

Somehow, in the midst of his swirling thoughts El had taken his hand again and she was holding so tightly both their knuckles had gone white. She still had her temple pressed to his, and their twined arms were touching from shoulder to fingertip. “You can tell me,” she said, and they were just three words, softly spoken, but somehow Will was able to read every single nuanced thing she was incapable of saying - “ _It’s okay that you’re not okay_ ,” and, “ _I’ll always listen_ ,” and, “ _whatever you need, I’m here_ ,” and most importantly, “ _I understand_.” 

Mike had been right. El always understood. 

Will took a deep, grounding breath. El’s small, strong hand was chilly and sweaty in his own, and the over-washed sheets and quilts were soft beneath them. The mattress was lumpy. The air in the cabin was stale and stagnant, and smelled like mothballs and wood smoke. His mouth tasted like morning breath, and he could hear El breathing, his own pulse pounding away in his ears. He was safe, and there was no reason to panic. 

“How do you find it?” he asked instead of addressing her concern. “If it’s inside of you, how do you find it? Do you just think about it and - and you’re there?”

“No,” she said, but then she made an unhappy noise and said, “Yes. I don’t know."

“That’s okay,” Will said quickly, gently. For El, the words “I don’t know,” came at face value just as often as they meant, “I can’t find or don’t have the words I need.”

“I think,” she said slowly, turning to face him again. “I think I could show you.”

When Will turned onto his side again, her face was inches from his own. The stagnant air was stronger around her - she hadn’t showered in almost a week, and when he really looked he could see the grease collecting at her hairline, the sallowness in her face, but the only thing he could focus on was the sudden spark of light in her eyes.

He took a deep breath, squeezed her hand with his, and said, “Okay.”

That was how Mike found them; lying side by side in El’s tiny bed, Will blindfolded, El with her eyes closed, their hands clasped, with the dull, staticky hum of dead air on the radio the only sound in the quiet of the cabin. Will had no idea how long Mike had been standing there, but it wasn’t until the mattress dipped near their feet that he realized they weren’t alone. 

The afternoon had been almost a complete bust. It had been depressingly easy for Will to slip away from himself - _disassociating_ his mind supplied traitorously - but no matter how they tried they hadn’t found the in-between place again. El couldn’t take him with her, no matter how easily she found it herself (or how easily she found him in it, even if he’d felt that electricity again, just as Mike had described it)

Will tore his hand from El’s and ripped the blindfold off his eyes when the bed frame creaked, knowing she hadn’t moved and hating the way his heart leapt into this throat at the sudden realization that they were no longer alone.

“Hey,” Mike said gently when Will’s eyes landed on him. “It’s okay. It’s just me. What’s with the blindfold?”

“Will can find the Void,” El said before he could gather his words, and a worried frown tipped Mike’s mouth as he looked between them - Will sitting up, worrying the blindfold in his hands, and El still reclined, her eyes closed as if drifting. Mike had one hand on El’s pajama-clad knee, but his eyes finally landed (and stuck) on Will.

“Will can find the Void,” Mike repeated, half statement, half question, and Will couldn’t meet his eyes.

A long moment of silence passed between the three of them before El said, “It’s okay.” She still hadn’t opened her eyes, but she laid her hand over Mike’s and he laced their fingers together, finally looking at her. Not for the first time Will felt a little like a coat rack as Mike’s other hand found her cheek and he leaned down - presumably to kiss her, but by then Will had averted his eyes. It wasn’t that he was uncomfortable, exactly - he wasn’t, and he would tell anyone who asked - but when it was just the three of them, when the rest of the party wasn’t present, it felt like he was intruding on something intensely private.

“You’re up,” Mike said gently after a protracted silence, and El hummed a response that neither agreed nor disagreed with his statement. When Will chanced a look over his shoulder she was still laying back in the pillows and stuffed animals, her eyes open but blinking slowly, her face sleepy and blank. Will climbed stiffly to his feet and stretched, averting his eyes again when Mike leaned forward to press another kiss to her forehead, murmuring something unintelligible, and then he too was rising from the bed and Will followed him out into the living room on a whim. 

The sandwich making routine started, just as it had every day since Monday, only this time instead of terse silence Mike said, “So,” glancing back at Will when he didn’t reply. “It’s not the Upside Down.”

Just hearing the words made Will want to cringe. “No,” he snapped (and immediately felt bad). “El closed the gate.”

“You just have superpowers now?”

“You’re just taking this in stride?”

Mike turned to face him with a sigh, leaning back with both palms on the counter. “My girlfriend moves things with her mind. A couple years ago you were possessed, and all your friends climbed into another dimension to fight monsters. At this point I think it’d probably be weirder if you _didn’t_ develop some sort of weird sixth sense or something. You’re like… Spiderman.”

“Spiderman?” Will asked, smiling in spite of himself. Mike had always been good at that - putting him at ease when things were wrong. It was nice, and comforting, to see some of that shining through the gloomy, angry exterior Mike had been wearing the last two weeks. 

“Demogorgon Man doesn’t have the same ring,” Mike replied as he picked up the plate of sandwiches. 

They were all in better spirits after that. Though there was a deep uneasiness simmering just under his skin, Will had been soothed by El’s calm assurance that wherever he’d been going when he was sleeping, it wasn’t the Upside Down. The defensive hitch of Mike’s shoulders eased with every bite of food El ate under her own power - and most of it of her own volition. She drifted a few times, but every time Mike called her back with a gentle, “Hey,” and even if she startled like she’d just realized she wasn’t alone she managed to choke down an entire half a sandwich before she refused anymore food and burrowed down into her blankets. 

Whatever well of energy she’d tapped when they’d both woken from the Void had hidden again, and they spent the rest of the afternoon mostly in silence. She mumbled something gently to Mike too low for Will, who’d situated himself at her desk with paper and colored pencils, to hear, but all Mike did was smooth her frizzy, dirty hair back off her forehead and mumble something right back, and then they’d curled up together and fallen asleep, Mike on top of the covers with one arm laying against the small of El’s back, El with her face pressed so tightly against his neck Will wondered if she could even breathe. 

(A few weeks later El would find a sketch of the two of them in that exact position, tucked into the massive pile of homework that would consume her life for over a month in an effort not to be held back a year, and it would be such a welcome, heartbreaking surprise that she’d pin it up on the cork board hanging over her desk and spend a good ten minutes crying for the small kindness.)

It wasn’t a perfect evening; it wasn’t even close. After her initial exuberance with Will and the half a ham and butter sandwich Mike had managed to get her to eat El retreated back into herself and the soft, dark comfort of her bed, and she and Mike had both slept until Hopper had come home that evening. He’d called Will out into the living room, and together the two of them had eaten a quiet, almost pleasant dinner while Will relayed what had happened that afternoon - conveniently leaving out the parts about the Void - but all in all the whole night felt almost normal, even if El still couldn’t be moved to speak more than a few words or eat much dinner when Hop finally woke both her and Mike up a little after 7:00. (It was more than normal - it was almost _fun_ \- to watch Mike stumble out of El’s room and to the bathroom, pink-cheeked and bleary-eyed and refusing to meet anyone’s gaze because his girlfriend’s father had just caught the both of them in her bed - never mind that they were sleeping fully-clothed, not even under the blankets together. Will knew Hopper would be teasing Mike about it for a few years at least.)

Mrs. Wheeler had needed the station wagon that evening, so he and Mike biked home together. Will protested when Mike made a point of riding with him right up to the front porch, but he’d been unable to sway his friend. His mom was working late all week, so the house was dark, and Will went through it, methodically flipping on all the lights before finally settling in the living room where he drifted off on the couch, both lamps on and the TV blaring. 

Before they’d left the cabin that night, Will had picked up the book, still stuffed with the pamphlets, and shuffled awkwardly toward the bed where he’d laid it down beside El. Her unblinking eyes had focused, first on him, then on the book, and Will had barely gotten out the words “Maybe if you’re feeling better-” before she’d turned away, rolling over in the bed and pulling the covers up around her shoulders so violently the book was knocked to the floor and the pamphlets had scattered. Mike had been kind enough to help Will gather the papers - though he made no attempt to urge El to have a look - and when that was done he placed the book gently on the nightstand. He’d squeezed her shoulder, murmured his goodbyes, then stepped out of the room so Mike could do the same in private. 

When he woke the house was dark except for one lone bulb in the lamp on the side table, and his mom - because it couldn’t possibly have been anyone else - had thrown a blanket over him. Everything was quiet and still, and his watch read that it was a little after three in the morning. 

(He was both heartened and concerned that he hadn’t woken up at all to his mother coming home. Sleep was a good, necessary thing he’d been missing the last few years, but it put him on edge that so much noise hadn’t woken him. How could he run from something if he couldn’t hear it coming?)

Some strange mix of energy and anxiety kept him from going back to sleep, so instead Will made himself productive. He finished the dishes in the sink, wiped down the counters and cabinets in the kitchen, then swept and mopped the linoleum floor, singing Joan Jett under his breath as he worked. He wasn’t sure where the sudden influx of productivity had come from, but he rode it to its conclusion, even going so far as to pick up the laundry in his room before climbing into the shower, feeling more like a functional person than he had in days. El had turned away from the tools he wanted to give her, but that was fine. He couldn’t make her take them, and he wouldn’t push them on her - but she’d looked him in the eye, and spoken to him, and eaten, and all those things gave Will hope for the coming days. 

Sometime around 8:00 his mother stumbled into the kitchen in her pajamas, just in time for him to slide the last batch of French toast on to a plate. 

“What’s the occasion?” Joyce asked as she poured herself a cup of black coffee and loaded it with sugar, eyeing her youngest son. 

“No occasion,” Will replied as he carried two plates to the table, each loaded with eggs, french toast, and fried ham. “Just felt like doing something nice.”

“That explains the Pine-Sol,” Joyce mumbled as she grabbed the syrup Will had put out on the kitchen table. “How long have you been up?”

The question was posed casually, and Will knew there was no weight behind it, but he still hesitated before answering honestly. “A few hours,” he said, but then his mother’s face fell and he hurried on with, “but I slept really good. I just. You always take care of me.”

“I’m your mom, baby,” Joyce broke in with a gentle smile. 

“I know,” Will said before she could continue, “and you do everything for me, so… so I can make you breakfast sometimes. Jonathan used to, right?”

Joyce gave him a look then, and put her fork down so she could reach across the space that separated them and cup his cheek in her tiny, callused hand, her thumb stroking gently, before she said, “Thanks, sweetie.”

Will beamed as they both dug in, and their plates were almost clean before Joyce said, “God, I miss him.”

“Yeah,” Will agreed, thinking of his brother - his best friend - all alone in a big, strange city as tears pricked his eyes. “Me too.”

She shooed him off to school the second his plate was clean, and even offered to drive him, but Will waved her off with a gentle, “It’s fine, I want the exercise,” and after he’d kissed her cheek and assured her for the third time he had his inhaler he took off up the drive, feeling cautiously optimistic about everything. Homeroom passed in the same usual blur, only this time he had something approaching good news to impart to his friends, and for the first time since he’d left school and ridden out to the cabin by himself the chilly March air was crisp and invigorating. 

El let him into the cabin, and even though she didn’t get out of bed to greet him he’d only been there perhaps half an hour before she asked, “Did you dream about it?” in her calm, quiet voice. 

Will was fiddling with her radio and a roll of aluminum foil he’d brought from home, trying to tune into the rock station the next county over with little success. When he looked over his shoulder at her she was facing the wall, and his heart dropped a little. “No,” he said slowly. “I didn’t dream about anything last night. Not that I remember, anyways.”

The room was silent and Will gave up on the rock station, settling instead for Motown - which his mother loved unashamedly - and the Four Tops were singing, “... hearing the part that used to touch my heart,” when El asked, “Have you ever seen anyone?”

She still wasn’t looking at him, but Will couldn’t help the little smile that tipped the corners of his mouth as he gazed at her back. “Just you.” Then, gathering his courage, he said, “Maybe I could read to you?”

El made a non-committal noise, shuffling a little under the blankets, but she must have sensed him reaching for the book still sitting on her bedside table because then she said, “Radio is fine,” so instead he just laid down on his back beside her, his head on the edge of her pillow and Martha and the Vandellas on the radio, and let himself drift.

He didn’t dream, and he didn’t see the Void, and he wasn’t even sure he slept, but when he came back to himself it was because the floorboards in the living room were creaking. El was still beside him in the narrow twin bed, and he hadn’t heard the front door opening or closing, so even though there were only a handful of people it could have possibly been his heart was still in his throat, and the feeling didn’t go away when the person identified themselves by calling, “Hey sweetie, how ya feeling?” 

Will knew that voice as well as he knew his own heartbeat. It was the voice of home and love, safety and comfort; it was his mom’s voice, and he was in deep shit. 

In the long moment that stretched out between hearing her voice and actually seeing her he genuinely contemplated two things. The first was trying to escape out El’s bedroom window, but that would never work for a myriad of reasons, and the second was hiding, either under her bed or in the closet, but that wouldn’t work either, and while his mind raced and the seconds turned to painful minutes in his mind his body was moving in slow motion. He turned his head to find that El had rolled to face him, and her eyes were wide with some unclear emotion as she gazed back at him. He could hear the footsteps on the floorboards outside of her bedroom, drawing ever closer as he struggled to sit up, to push himself off the bed and - and what? 

It didn’t matter. He’d no sooner climbed to his feet than Joyce was in the doorway and everyone froze. 

“Will,” Joyce said finally, her whole face contorting as she frowned. “Baby, what-” She stopped, glancing down at her watch, her frown deepening. “It’s 12:10. What are you doing here?”

“El needs help,” Will replied earnestly, and Joyce’s frown turned from confused to sad. 

“I know, honey,” she said before gesturing back toward the living room. “Can you - could you just - come out here for a second?”

Will sighed and followed her out of El’s bedroom, knowing exactly what she wanted and dreading every second of it. The bedroom door swung shut behind him. 

“Have you been here all morning?” his mom asked with a smile so brittle Will feared it would snap her face clean in two. 

“Mostly,” he replied. 

That awful, horrible smile drooped at the corners. “You told me you were going to school.”

“I was,” he said as his heartbeat picked up. “I did. I’ve been going-”

“Been going?” she cut in. “How long have you been here?”

Will sighed, fiddling with the belt loops on his jeans. “A few days.”

“ _A few days_?” she echoed, her voice rising in pitch. “A few days. Does Hopper know you’re here?”

The first day Hopper had come home for lunch to find Will in the cabin a silent agreement had been made; Hopper wouldn’t stop him, and Will wouldn’t upset his mom. That Hopper was complicit in Will’s deception hadn’t escaped either of them, but Will knew the man was desperate to help El, and so he was willing to risk Joyce’s anger - anger Will could feel radiating off of her when he answered her question with silence. 

“So…” Joyce prompted softly when he didn’t continue, wrapping her arms around herself. 

“So we miss her,” Will replied, trying to keep the defensiveness out of his voice. “I miss her.”

His mom sighed, her fingers clenching in the soft, overwashed brown wool of her sweater. “Honey, of course you miss her. She’s one of your best friends. I just-” She stopped and bit her thumbnail, unclenched her hands and put them on her hips. “I want to know where you are, you know? In case something happens and I need to find you.”

He hated that tears were pricking at his eyes when he said, “I know,” because her words were the very crux of what had compelled him to lie, and it felt like a terrible betrayal of her love to admit that her concern was stifling, and that he felt smothered beneath it. 

“And it’s fine,” she went on. “It’s fine you wanna be here, and I- I don’t care that you’re cutting class to do it, but… why didn’t you tell me? It’s so important,” and here the frown tightened as she pressed her mouth into a thin, angry line, “you _know_ how important it is to me, that I know where you are, Will.”

“I know,” he said again, his gaze trained on the floor as his stomach churned with guilt - guilt, and the first traitorous sparks of anger. “I know, but- I just…”

“You just..?” his mom prompted harshly. 

Will clenched his jaw against the words he wanted to say, but the anger bubbling in his stomach finally forced them out in a sullen, stilted mumble. “Mike’s mom doesn’t make him call her every time he gets somewhere.” 

“She didn’t sit through a fake funeral for him either,” Joyce snapped. “She didn’t spend a week wondering if she was ever gonna see him again. She didn’t have to watch him disappear while that _thing_ -“

“That’s not my fault!” he broke in, his voice cracking on the last word. “You can’t keep punishing me for it!”

There was bright color rising in his mother’s pale face when she shot back, “No one’s punishing you, Will! I’m just trying to keep you safe - protect you!”

“It feels like punishment,” Will insisted as he blinked back the tears filling his eyes. “It feels like - like prison.”

Joyce’s frown deepened, and Will watched as she pushed down the hurt that flashed, lightning quick, across her face. Shame clawed at his insides, but his anger had more than overtaken it, and in his mother’s frown he saw the same overwhelming conflict reflected back at him. It had been years since they’d really fought, and now Will was remembering why: because fighting Joyce Byers was like fighting a wildfire. Once she’d made up her mind there was no changing it. She’d never been strict or overbearing, but the few times she’d clashed with her children she’d come out the unquestioned victor. 

Towards the end of their marriage, Lonnie’s only defense against her had been to retreat to some hole in the wall where he could bitch about his wife and spend whatever was left of his paycheck. Will didn’t have that option. 

They stared at each other through a tense silence, fists clenched, jaws tight, until Joyce nodded slowly. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said tightly, “but I’m your mom and you need to do what I say.”

She moved toward him, toward El’s closed bedroom door, clearly indicating they were done, but Will couldn’t let it go. The simmering pool of resentment that had replaced his stomach wouldn’t let him. 

“So that’s it?” he demanded as he stood his ground. “I do what you say and we never talk about it and I just never get to go anywhere or do anything on my own ever again?”

Joyce shook her head. “I’m not fighting with you about this,” she said, placing her hands on his shoulders to move him out of the way. 

But he wouldn’t budge. “What are you gonna do when I graduate? Just lock me in the house?”

“The way you’re acting right now, I should!” she snapped. “We are not fighting about this, Will. _Move_.”

“No!” he said hotly as tears started to fall, sliding slowly down his face. “You can’t just shut me up for the rest of my life! That’s not - that’s not fair! You can’t protect me from-”

Her hands tightened again, clenching in the worn fabric of his sweatshirt, and that was all the warning he had before she pulled him into a crushing embrace, one hand on the back of his head. “I thought you were dead,” she said, her voice breaking. “You weren’t breathing, baby, and I thought you were dead.” She took a deep, shuddering breath, and squeezed him tightly before pulling away to cup his face in both her trembling hands. It broke Will’s heart a little to see her crying, and he closed his eyes as she pressed her forehead to his. “But you weren’t,” she breathed. “You came back to me, and then, then - that thing...”

Terror rose, thick and choking - even now, even after years - just to have it mentioned. “Mom,” he sobbed, hoping she would stop and somehow unable to ask her to. 

“I know,” she soothed. “I know, but - I can’t go through that again. Look at me, Will.”

And there it was when he opened his eyes, clear as day on his mother’s face: the same determination that had saved his life twice over, the unstoppable force that was his mother. 

“I can’t go through that again, sweetheart,” she said. “Losing you would kill me. So I’m sorry if I’m nosy, and overbearing, and if I fuss, but… I just need you to do this for me right now, okay? Please?”

Will shook his head, feeling helpless and trapped. “That’s not fair,” he said again, trying to pull away from her (and the creeping sensation that he couldn’t breathe). Joyce just held him tighter. “It’s not fair.”

“I know, baby,” she said as she stroked a hand back through his hair. “I know it’s not fair. Please, Will. Just a little longer. Just until...”

“Until what?” he demanded when she tailed off, her eyes straying to the worn floorboards beneath their feet. 

Some of the fire behind her eyes died and she said, “I don’t know,” with just the tiniest shake of her head, still not looking at him. “I just need more time, baby. Okay?”

Then her eyes met his and all he saw was desperation. 

“Okay,” he said with a shaky exhale as he stopped trying to pry himself free and sank into the gentle, suffocating circle of her arms. 

“Thank you,” she said when she let him go. “I promise it’s not forever.”

Then she moved past him and into El’s bedroom, closing the door behind her and leaving Will alone with his quiet defeat. 

Not knowing what else to do he shuffled across the room, dropped onto the threadbare couch, and sat staring at nothing. For a long time that was all he could do, the anger coursing through him so overwhelming it had pushed out all rational thought and feeling until he was almost numb with it. It was ringing in his ears and souring his mouth and building up in his muscles. He was angry at his mom for caring too much, and angry at his friends for trying to understand. He was angry at the lab and the scientists and the Upside Down for wrecking his chances at anything like a normal, happy life. He was angry at the universe for putting him in the Demogorgon’s path. More than anything, he was angry at himself for not pushing down the guilt and shame, for not standing up to his mother and demanding that things change. He was angry at himself that the one person he wasn’t mad at was so weighed down by her own past that she couldn’t even get out of bed and he hadn’t been able to do a goddamn thing to help her. 

There was movement around him as he sat stewing in his own self-hatred and helplessness. His mom hustled El into the bathroom, carrying a change of clothes. The sound of running water filled the cabin, a perfect, monotonous accompaniment to the dull roar of his own blood pumping in his veins. Behind the door he could hear his mother talking in a low, soothing murmur, and for a long time those were the only sounds. After half an hour or so Joyce appeared again and dropped a set of clean sheets beside him on the couch. She put one hand on his shoulder and leaned down to kiss the top of his head before returning to the bathroom. Will took the hint, and after he’d changed the sheets on El’s bed he sat down at the desk, pulled a sheet of blank paper from the stack he’d given her, and began to scribble furiously. He scribbled while his mom guided El into the room and sat her down on the floor so she could braid the girl’s hair back out of her face. He scribbled while his mom tucked El back into bed, handing her one of the many teddy bears piled behind her pillow. Joyce bent to kiss her forehead with a gentle, “It’ll get better, sweetie. I promise,” and Will was still scribbling when his mom wrapped her arms around his shoulders, kissed the top of his head again, and said, “When she’s better, you’re grounded.”

The pencil snagged the paper, and it tore. 

He held himself together until he heard the front door close. Then, in a flurry of uncharacteristic rage he snatched the piece of paper off the desk and ripped it in half, balling the pieces together and squeezing with both hands until his knuckles turned white. He was dimly aware of the tightness in his chest as his heart raced, the way his breath wooshed in and out of his lungs, so fast and frantic he was lightheaded with it. He thought of counting to one hundred by sevens; he thought of his five senses; he thought of breathing deep in his belly - but nothing would take root. His anger, pressing in on him from all sides, was turning quickly to panic and all he could do was stare down at his hands, balled so tightly around the paper his arms ached to the elbow. 

El said his name, her quiet voice shattering the silence around them like a shotgun blast through a glass window, and Will snapped. 

“It’s not fair!” he yelled, throwing the ruined paper down onto the desk. It bounced and tumbled off the edge, landing on the floor with a dry whisper that Will neither heard nor noticed over the scrape of the chair legs as he stood. “I can’t go anywhere or do _anything_ without her checking on me every ten minutes! I feel like a prisoner. She doesn’t even want me going in the backyard, she doesn’t like it when I ride my bike alone!” He hated that his voice was starting to break, that he was near tears again as helplessness began to push the anger out. “The only reason she lets me is because we got in a fight about it, and I made her cry. And how fucked up is it that I feel bad for that? For asking to do something normal? I just-“ 

He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself, but the exhale was shaky. He’d been staring at nothing, and when he glanced at El he was relieved to find nothing but gentle curiosity in her face. “I feel like I’m suffocating,” he said, “I can’t stay home all the time. Sometimes I don’t wanna be home at all, but where would I even go? I just wanna be alone sometimes, and not feel like I have to pretend I’m okay. I’m…” His breath hitched dangerously. “I’m so fucking far from okay.”

El said nothing, but she was watching him attentively so Will sat down, dropping miserably beside her. The helplessness had completely consumed his anger, and with it had come the deep, soul-crushing sadness that so often drove him to seek solitude. He wanted to run and hide - it was what he was good at, after all - but if ever anyone could understand what he’d been through, it was the girl sitting beside him, waiting for him to share as much or as little as he wanted. Sharing was good. Sharing your bad thoughts took away their power. Sharing was the simplest course to chart and the hardest path to follow. 

So Will dug deep, looking for courage, and somewhere down in all that darkness he found just enough to say, “I don’t think I’m ever going to be okay.”

He chanced another look at her and found her frowning, obviously not understanding, so he continued, “I don’t know if I remember ever feeling okay. I must’ve, at some point, but even when I was a kid things just felt… wrong. My dad couldn’t stop pointing it out. You know I’m the reason he left?”

He’d never said it out loud, and he had to stop to swallow down the lump forming in his throat. El stayed silent, and when Will was ready he said, “It’s not true, I guess - not really, anyways, but I still think about it a lot. Mom was at work, and Dad was outside, doing… I don’t know what. Drinking, probably. Working on his stupid car. It doesn’t matter, he was pissed him off and he came inside, saw me coloring at the kitchen table, and he just went off.” His throat closed up again, and tears pricked his eyes at the memory. “He… he called me a whole bunch of names, grabbed my arm really hard and threw me out the front door. He kept yelling about how boys should be outside, that he wasn’t gonna let me grow up soft. He didn’t mean to hurt me, he was just being too rough, but there was a bruise, and… and I stumbled, because I was dragging my feet, so it was my fault I busted my chin open on the porch.” 

He paused again to take a shaky breath, and El said, “Good papas don’t hurt their babies.”

“It was my fault,” Will said again, knowing it wasn’t true but still feeling it deep down inside. “Kids trip. I tripped. And then I sat on the porch crying like a baby until my Mom came home, and when she saw the bruise, and all the blood… I thought she was gonna kill him. She told him if he didn’t leave she was gonna call the cops and have them drag him out, so…”

“He left,” El said. 

“And never looked back.” Will grimaced, and wiped at the wetness under his eyes. “You know I’ve only seen him maybe six times since they split?” His hands curled into fists against his thighs. “I don’t think he really wanted another kid. He sure as hell didn’t want _me_. I can’t even really blame him. Look at me, I’m a complete basket case! Even I don’t want me. Why would anyone else?”

Beside him, El sat up so she could cover one of his hands with her own. She squeezed tightly as she laid her head on his shoulder and said, “We want you,” with such quiet fierceness that Will had to choke down a laugh even though he was crying freely now.

“Thanks,” he said softly, turning his hand under hers so he could squeeze back. “That helps. I just… I just wish I felt anything close to normal instead of like - like I’m being left behind. Like my mom’s holding me down and you’re all just moving on with life.”

El’s eyebrows scrunched together as she gazed up at him in silent question, and Will sighed. It always seemed so petty in his mind. He was alive, against all odds - why couldn’t that be enough? Anxiety roiled in his stomach, painful and sour. “I mean, it’s- it’s stupid,” he stuttered as he forced the words out, “but sometimes I see you, and… and Mike, or Lucas and Max, and I think I might be broken because I’ve never felt anything like that.” But there was so much more to it. “I’m scared it’s never going to happen, and I’m scared of what’ll happen if it does, and I’m just - I’m just scared, all the time, of everything, and I wish I wasn’t but sometimes I can’t pretend.” He clasped his free hand over his mouth as if he could hold back the sob that broke free. El’s hand tightened painfully on his own, and his voice was muffled as he spoke through his fingers. “And I can’t - I can’t _move_. I’ve tried, I have, but I’m just… just _stuck_. Everytime I think about school and grades and plans I just - what’s the point? It’s not going to change what happened to me, or you, or anybody else and I wish I could stop standing still but I _can’t_!” Tears were flowing down his face, over his fingers and the back of his palm. The air around them seemed charged, as though a storm were brewing above their heads. “I wish I could. I- I wish I felt like anything I did mattered. I wish my dad loved me and I wish my mom would just _leave me alone_.” 

And he didn’t want to say it out loud, he didn’t want anyone to know, but he couldn’t stop himself. All he could do was choke the words so they came out in a whisper. “Sometimes I wish you’d never found me in the Upside Down.”

El yanked her hand out of his, but only so she could throw both her arms around his trembling shoulders. She pulled him down (or maybe she pushed him) to lay against her, both of them propped against the pillows. He pulled his feet up onto the bed, curling up on his side, and El tucked her body up behind his. Her knees slotted neatly in behind his so she was spooned against him with her cheek pressed into his hair, and they stayed like that for a long time, Will crying quietly as El held him. 

It wasn’t until something wet and cold splashed onto his temple that he realized she was crying too. 

“El,” he said gently, trying to turn so he could look at her, but her arms tightened so all he could do was lay still and wait. When she finally spoke her voice was so quiet he had to strain to hear it. 

“I can’t forget anymore,” she said, her words barely more than the exhale that carried them. “I try but I can’t make it go away like I did… before. It’s just - there. Forever. Like it’s - Like it’s waiting for me. To be tired, or sad, or - or bored or happy or anything!” There was a sudden shift in the air pressure as her voice rose, and Will pressed closer, seeking safety. “I remember _everything_ , and I see it when I sleep, and when I wake up - I can’t go back.” Her arms tightened again, like a band around his chest. “I can’t go back,” she said again, and the air around them almost crackled, raising the hair on the nape of Will’s neck. Her voice was soft and steady. “I _won’t_. I’d rather be dead. I’ll do it myself if I have to.”

His heart was beating too fast and too hard, and he felt close to some terrible, unseen breaking point. Never mind all that he had just confessed - or the things he still wanted to say but hadn’t yet found the courage to; never mind how very alike they were in their suffering; never mind that it made him a hypocrite of the highest degree - every part of him wished she’d never told him, because there was no doubt in his mind that she would do it. She would end her own life before returning to captivity, and he would have to carry that secret around forever, because he knew what the next words out of her mouth were going to be. 

“Please don’t tell Mike,” she begged, the soft steel gone from her voice. “He won’t understand. He’d just try to make me promise not to and I can’t promise. I can’t, Will. Please, please don’t tell him.”

She dissolved into quiet sobs, and her crying broke Will’s heart a little. Here was a girl who could level buildings, who had ripped open reality and fought monsters and been willing to sacrifice her life - and she was just a hurt, scared child like the rest of them. Until that moment, he had never fully comprehended Mike’s all-consuming desire to shelter her, but here she was, begging him to help her guard one of her deepest secrets. It seemed a small price to pay in exchange for his life twice over. 

“I won’t tell Mike,” he said, turning in her embrace so he could throw an arm across her waist and pull her tightly to him. His heart settled as he pressed their foreheads together. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thank you,” she breathed, her words hoarse and watery. Tilting her chin, she pressed a cold, wet kiss to the clammy skin of his temple before laying her cheek against his and hugging him tightly. “Love you.”

“I love you too,” Will replied without hesitation. “We all do, so much. And we can’t wait for you to be ready to come back to us.”


	7. Chapter 6: love dares you to change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are folks. This fic was less about the destination and more about the journey.
> 
> But I'm still hoping you find the destination satisfactory.
> 
> Cheers!

El lay awake a long time, not drifting and dozing as she’d done for what seemed like an eternity but contemplating the changes that had come over Will in the last few days. Like her, he had been irreparably damaged by Hawkins Lab and, also like her, he carried that hurt deep down in his bones. It had always felt safer to her that way: if you buried it deep enough, it couldn’t get you. 

Only that wasn’t quite right. In fact, it wasn’t right at all. The wound had festered, just like Papa had said it would.

\- _not Papa, it was never Papa, it was Kali being mean, but it was him she saw and his voice she heard, whispering to her in her moments of weakness, kind and cruel in the same fetid breath, rotten to the core, just like the festering wound she’d tried to bury deep down inside herself, deeper even than the safe, dark place where Papa wasn’t supposed to be able to reach her but he was there now she couldn’t shut him out he was there he was everywhere nowhere to run_ \- 

With a choked, panicked whimper she forced herself to take a deep breath and hold it to the count of five, willing herself back into reality. Her bedroom surrounded her, the once-bare walls plastered with movie and band posters. Will was warm beside her, his breathing deep and even. In another hour or so Mike would sulk through the front door on too-long legs and spend the evening surrounding her with himself. Hopper would come home and fix everyone dinner. 

She wasn’t in the lab. Papa couldn’t get her. 

Slowly, so slowly as she breathed, the vice gripping her heart eased, urged along by Will’s quiet, rhythmic breaths, the hum of the electric space heater, the wind moving through the bare tree branches outside. Her heartbeat slowed, and the weight lifted a little. 

_Safe_ , she thought. _I’m safe here_. 

Will stirred then, and turned a little, pressing his face first into the pillow, his forehead scrunching with some unknown concern, before he settled again with his cheek on her shoulder. His hand twitched against the small of her back, his fingers curling into her sweatshirt, and then his breathing evened again.

Laying like this, so close she could feel his breath on her chin, the gentleness rolling off of him was almost palpable. It was a thing she had become increasingly aware of, first with Hopper and Mike, then slowly with others, that when she was near them she could reach out - not quite like reaching for the void, but more like reaching inside - and get back some sort of echo of her own feelings now tinged with theirs. A few years down the road, she would look back and consider that whens he’d broken the windows in the cabin she’d been feeding off Hop’s fear and anger, that her worry and agitation the day she’d broken down at school had been just as much Mike’s as her own - but that time was still far away, and for now the sensation was new and exciting. She’d only just discovered that if she pushed hard enough, she could also change how other people felt.

(It was a thing she had only done once, when Mike’s parents had spent an entire morning fighting, and telling her had brought him to tears. Sitting on the cabin’s front porch, he’d wiped at his face with angry, jerky movements, as though ashamed, and she’d wanted so badly for him to feel better, so she’d wrapped her arms around his thin shoulders and pulled his face against her neck, reaching down into herself to pull out all the love she felt, all the happiness he’d brought her, and push it into him. 

Wonderfully, terribly, it had worked - and she’d been relieved and wracked with guilt, and she still hadn’t told him what she’d done. She didn’t know if she ever would.)

It wasn’t peace she felt from Will, and it wasn’t happy enough to be contentment, but there was a quiet sort of stillness slowly overtaking the pulsing tangle of his anger. It was buried deep too, so deep she almost hadn’t noticed it, for it had blended so seamlessly with the quiet of the cabin and the silence of the woods surrounding them that Will himself had almost seemed to disappear into the background, and in his absence her own pain was so overwhelming she imagined she could hear it. There was a sonorous roar reverberating in her eardrums, like river rapids, or a waterfall, but she had sat with it for so long that the noise seemed to come from far away. It wasn’t so scary at this distance, and for the first time in a long time she was able to look at it almost as she had before she’d lost control; not head-on, nor even with the same sidelong fear with which she’d usually observed it, but rather just to simply acknowledge that the pain exsted inside her. That she was capable of even this minimal level of self-examination surprised her, when yesterday, or even that morning, she would have been sent sprialing. If pressed, she might even have lied and said she felt better.

Better enough to form some opinion on what she wanted for snack when Mike finally made it to the cabin after school (and the smile that split his face was like sunlight). Better enough to sit at the kitchen table later than evening while Hop reheated casserole for dinner (even if she couldn’t focus and didn’t eat more than a few bites, and her legs felt like jelly from disuse). Better enough to return Hopper’s soft, “Love you, kid,” before he went to bed that night. 

Sleep was slow to come, despite her exhaustion. She didn’t understand how doing nothing could leave you so worn out, or what it was about the darkness that seemed to push and squeeze at her mind, making rational thought twisty and strange. She didn’t like the dark; she didn’t like how it kept her up when the best thing to do was always to sleep or drift. 

She couldn’t sleep now, and she was so tired of drifting. She was ready to see the sun again. Her nightlight was a poor substitute. 

Hours later when dawn finally broke the first light that peeked through her curtains was watery and gray, but she was still so cheered to see it that she pulled herself out of bed on wobbly legs and stood by the window for a long time, her blanket around her shoulders. The sun came up slowly, creeping through the bare tree branches with all the warmth of an ice box; not enough to fight off the chill of the night before, not nearly enough to melt the snowdrifts, but there was enough light to see by, and even if she wanted warmth the light was enough. 

It would have to be. 

“You were mad,” she said to Will later that day from her place bundled up on the couch. 

Will, who was leaning back against the couch with a legal pad on his knees, tilted his head back to look at her. “What?”

She rolled onto her side to face him, her hands folded under her head, and their faces were so close she could see the startling green of his eyes. “Yesterday,” she said. “You were mad.”

Will grimaced down at his paper. “I’m sorry I yelled. I know you don’t like that.”

She shook her head. “No.” An apology wasn’t what she wanted. “No, you were mad, and now… now you’re not. Why?”

He chewed his lip thoughtfully, gazing at her, before finally shifting to face her. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking - he was so good at hiding - but she knew what he was feeling, and as she probed deeper she realized her mistake a split second before Will confirmed it. 

“I’m still mad, El,” he said gently. “It doesn’t all go away.”

She frowned. “But it’s… not there anymore. You - you did something with it. Moved it. Put it somewhere else.”

His answering smile was gentle. “I did move it. I let it out.”

It must have shown on her face that she wasn’t sure what he meant - how did you let a feeling _out_ of you? That was the whole point of feelings: they came from inside you - but Will was biting his lip at her in a way that she knew meant he was trying not to laugh, and all El could do was scowl. Then he did laugh. 

“I _talked_ about it!” he said. “I… got it out there. No, don’t - don’t make a face, just listen.” El grumbled, and turned her face into the arm of the couch but peeked out at him through her blankets when he nudged her knee with his elbow. “They’re just memories, El. Talking about them takes away their power to hurt you.”

“Too easy,” she muttered. 

Will sighed. “Not easy,” he said. “Simple, but not easy. Actually, it’s… really, really hard. And it hurts before it feels better. But it does feel better. I promise.”

He knew how much that word meant to her, and would never have dared to use it without absolutely meaning it, but she refused to believe it was so simple.

Simple, he’d said. Not easy. But how could it possibly be either. 

“Try it, if you don’t believe me,” he challenged, bumping her knee again. “Talk to me. Or Hop, or Mike. Look, you already feel a little better, don’t you? After yesterday?”

There was that word again: better. She didn’t feel better; not really, not by her understanding of the word. But she could admit that maybe she didn’t feel quite so weighed down.

So she gave him a begrudging nod. “Okay.”

If her response gave Will whiplash he didn’t show it. Her brain worked that way, sometimes. She spent so much time in her own head, going around and around the same set of problems and feelings with all the emotional intelligence of a middle schooler - and about as much vocabulary. It was an ugly, messy, wonderful place, full of hills and valleys, storms and sunlight, constantly shifting and changing, rarely still and never silent. 

But there was an advantage to standing at the center of that storm: when it got quiet, she knew to listen. 

Mike had his head down as he approached the cabin. He cut a lonely figure, stalking through the trees with his hands shoved deep into his coat pockets and his shoulders hitched up around his ears. The sunlight was weak, but it was just warm enough that he hadn't pulled his hood up, and with his chin tucked against his chest El could just see the tip of his nose, gone bright red beneath the fall of his dark hair. She was sitting in the glider on the front porch, bundled up in coat and boots (still in her pajamas), and even though she was making no effort to hide her presence he still started when he saw her. 

“Holy shit,” he swore, gripping one of the support columns to keep from slipping down the front steps. He looked exhausted; his eyes were bloodshot and shadowed, and his face was so pale that his freckles - which had finally started to disappear with age - were plainly visible even in the dim light of the late afternoon. 

A smile, soft and tremulous, lit up his face when he saw her. “Hey,” he said, swinging around the column to stand in front of her. “You’re up. Where’s Will?”

“Went home,” she said as she climbed to her feet. He opened his arms and El went to him, hugging him tightly around the middle, but she let go before he could really return the gesture. Ignoring the hurt look on his face, and the pounding of her own heart, she took one of his hands and pulled him back down the stairs and off the porch. 

His fingers were cold in her grasp, but he followed her willingly as she started to wander and didn’t question her except to ask if she was warm enough. A grateful smile, tossed over her shoulder, was all the answer she could give him. 

She was well acquainted with the woods around the cabin. She’d walked through the trees more times than she could count, both on her own and with various members of the party, and she didn’t think it was possible for her to be lost for longer than a few minutes (never mind her extraordinary ability to find people - and places - just by closing her eyes). Every time she glanced at him, she could see Mike’s worry in the set of his shoulders, feel it in the way his hand clutched at hers, but he didn’t try to pry any answers out of her. He didn’t even try to fill the silence, and for a long time the only sound was their feet sifting through the dead leaves of last fall. 

“It wasn’t Friday,” she said finally, looking pointedly ahead. “I was excited about Friday.”

He squeezed her hand, pulling her to a stop. “Me too.”

The silence that fell between them was heavy and uncomfortable. She could feel the weight of Mike’s gaze as she fiddled with his fingers, knowing what she wanted to do but unable to find the courage to start. Her brain stalled each time she tried, pushing violently against what she knew she had to do.

“Look,” Mike said suddenly. “I don’t - I don’t know what to do. Every time I say something I think I’m just making it worse, so… whenever you wanna talk, whatever you have to say, I’m here to listen.” Grabbing her other hand, he pressed her palms together and folded both his hands around hers. “I just want you to feel better.”

El swallowed down the lump in her throat as she looped her thumbs around the backs of his palms. “You can’t say anything until I’m done,” she said shakily. “You have to let me finish. You have to promise.”

“Of course,” he said quickly, nodding. “Of course I promise. Whatever you need.”

Then she took a deep breath and let go of his hands. 

“I have a scar,” she said because she didn’t know how else to start. “Here.” She hadn’t intended to show him but her hands moved on their own, one lifting the hem of her henley as the other tugged at the waistband of her sweatpants until the scar was visible. He’d seen her in less - much less - but his face still flamed even as his eyes narrowed, searching. One hand reached for her, fingers outstretched, but El took a quick step back and those fingers curled into a fist. She’d never get through it if he touched her. 

Holding onto the numbness that would allow her to speak, she dropped the hem of her shirt and turned away from him. “I remember it,” she told the trees, closing her eyes against the phantom lights of the lab and the memory of Papa’s hand in hers. “Going to sleep and waking up… _hurting_. I couldn’t walk. Or eat. And he didn’t make me, not for a long time.” 

She would never understand how she could forget something like that, but she remembered most of it now: the pain and the nausea, the headaches, the drowsiness, the stinging of the IV, the staples - and above all that, how stupidly grateful she had been to rest. There’d been no experiments for almost six weeks, no electrodes, no isolation tank, no bloody nose; and every day Papa had brought a new book. They’d just been picture books, and she hadn’t been allowed to keep them, but he’d sat beside her while she read to herself, so happy to have his attention without anything expected of her in return. 

Mike was quiet but she could feel his confusion and hurt blazing like a fire against her back. If she turned she knew what she would see: desperate eyes and fidgeting limbs, his hair impossibly mussed because he couldn’t stop running his hands through it. How could she live with herself if she laid this out for him? How could she live at all if she didn’t?

The wind picked up as she breathed, fighting for control while the trees creaked and groaned around them. There was nothing for it. It would never be easier. There was no way to talk about it that wouldn’t hurt, but maybe Will was right. Maybe she could take away its power. She’d spent so much of her life living in the shadow of her past, letting Papa control her. She wasn’t a helpless little girl anymore, and she was _so fucking sick_ of feeling like one.

Her tongue felt awkward and useless, her mouth glued shut, and even the sight of the woods around them was too much. Shutting her eyes, she pried her lips apart and tried to keep the terrible force inside her contained as she pushed the words out. 

“It’s - he- they took-“ she stuttered, tripping through a sentence she could see but couldn’t seem to say. The word was right there in her mind, bright like blazing sunlight, and still it wouldn’t come. She’d thought about it for over a week, seen it in marquee letters in her mind’s eye, flashing in neon everywhere she looked, but now all she could come up with was ‘history’ and that wasn’t right at all. ‘Hasty’ wasn’t anywhere near enough letters, and ‘hysterical’ was closer - so much closer; one of the roots was right - but _still_ wasn’t long enough and didn’t sound like a medical term, there weren’t enough hard consonants, sharp like the edges of shattered glass _why couldn’t she think of it_ \- 

“They took it,” she said finally, pressing both hands against her stomach and feeling like a shell of a person. The hollow feeling had lived in her chest but now it had spread, eating away at her insides until there was nothing left. “Cut it out. No babies. Not ever.”

She heard Mike’s gasp when he finally understood, a soft exhale like he’d been punched in the gut, and the wave of anger that crashed over her was so strong that for an instant she thought it was hers. She was already trembling as she tried to push it back, every nerve in her body alight with power and feeling, but her own anger rose to meet it, feeding off it until until her vision tunneled and the cold fell away and all she could think was _tear it down_.

(El had always known the anger was there inside him. She’d become well-acquainted with it over the 353 days they’d been apart, heard him cry and rage and sulk and pout and stew; he wore his heart on his sleeve and could no more hide how he felt than the sun could keep from rising. He kept it deep down in the same tender place where she kept her hurt, but Mike wasn’t like her. He was brave, her boy, and so good she sometimes worried about what the world would do to him - what she would do to him.)

“El,” he said shakily, and she knew, just _knew_ he was reaching for her, but it wasn’t time for comfort. If she stopped she would never start again. 

“You promised,” she snapped, the words laced with misplaced anger, and she wanted to hit herself because she wasn’t mad at him now, not even a little, and all he wanted was to comfort and understand her but all she could seem to do in return was hurt him. How could she do anything else when her entire childhood had been filled with pain and violence and loneliness and neglect? What else was there for her to offer? She didn’t get good grades, and she wasn’t well-spoken or worldly. She was awkward, and emotional, and so full of bad memories and experiences that sometimes she couldn’t even remember where she was. Even being pretty, something she had always been proud of, had become a barb once she’d started highschool, ever since she’d bravely tried to answer a reading comprehension question in Freshman English, and amidst the laughter that had followed directly on the heels of her wrong answer Deb Walters had sneered and said, “Good thing she’s pretty.” 

(She’d known immediately Deb wasn’t being nice, but she wasn’t sure how, and she’d wanted to cry when Mike had explained it to her.)

The worst thing - the very worst thing in her sheltered little world, the thing that had broken her - was that none of it was ever going away. 

She didn’t care that she’d never carry children. She didn’t, and she would swear it until the day she died if she had to - because she had to have something, one small thing she could cling to in all this - but it should have been _her choice_. She had _chosen_. She had _decided_. She had collected the information and weighed it against how she felt and what she wanted, and she had made a _choice_ \- but in the end there’d been no choice to make. It had all been settled years ago, when Papa had chosen for her; chosen to ensure she’d never be physically compromised with pregnancy or out of commission because of menstruation, chosen to wring everything he could out of the most valuable asset he’d acquired in his entire career. 

Because the ability to bear children wasn’t all he’d taken from her. 

Tears welled in her eyes as she thought of it. Four years out of the lab, and the lifetime of freedom she’d looked forward to was crumbling before her eyes. She was never going to be free. The memories would follow her for as long as she lived, waiting in the dark and ready to pounce, waiting for a weak moment to drag her back. The lab was long gone, but the torment of her childhood was alive and well inside her. 

If Papa had gotten what he wanted, it was alive and well in the world too, maybe four or five years old, learning the names of colors and how to count to ten; sporting her button nose, or her brown hair, or her heart-shaped face; being poked and prodded and tortured and locked in a dark, empty room; scared and alone and desperate for love. 

Mike had kept his promise. She knew it was costing him to stand there and do nothing as she cried, but his silence was painful. She wanted to fill it, to tell him how they’d hurt her and get the poison out, but the words were flitting around her head, as vibrant as Kali’s favored butterfly and just as hard to grasp. 

“The took something else too. Oocyte retrieval,” she said finally, licking at the saltiness on her lips as she pulled the words from the dark turbulence of her thoughts. She’d had to look up the words, first in the dictionary and then in the encyclopedias, and even then it had taken her time to piece it together. There was a rustle in the leaves as Mike moved closer, but he didn’t try to touch her as she whispered, “Egg harvest. To make more little monsters.”

She could hear Mike’s breathing and knew the exact moment the first tear fell. Turning, she watched it roll down his cheek to drip off his trembling chin. He was breathing hard through his nose, his lips pressed together in a thin, angry line and his dark eyes filled with tears. He’d clenched his hands into fists so tight his knuckles had gone white, but when she looked at him one of those fists uncurled and reached for her, his fingertips brushing against the back of her hand, gently asking for permission, but El shied away from his touch. Her skin was crawling with shame and guilt. She felt dirty, and empty, and unloveable.

“I- I could have,” she started haltingly as she pulled away. “Stopped him, I c-could have stopped him, I was strong enough. Now they’re out there, and I could have stopped-“

“No,” Mike interrupted, shaking his head, his expression fierce and his tone angry even through his tears. “This isn’t your fault.”

“I didn’t stop him,” she insisted, stepping back only to trip over an exposed tree root. She stumbled and fell, sitting down hard in the damp, rotting undergrowth, and that was where she stayed, pulling her knees tightly against her chest and rocking as she cried. “I could have stopped him!” she sobbed with her hands over her face. “I could have hurt him! I wish I had - I want to!”

Mike followed and all but fell to his knees in front of her. He wouldn’t stop touching her, and she didn’t know if she loved him or hated him for it. One moment he was squeezing her shoulders, the next he was rubbing her arms, or pushing her hair back or trying to pry her hands from her face, murmuring her name over and over. She wanted so badly for him to hold her and tell her everything was all right, but that would have been a lie and friends didn’t lie. 

“I’m sorry,” he said as he sat down close beside her. “I’m so, so sorry, El. That’s - that’s awful and no one deserves to go through that. You were just a kid. He was your - he was supposed to take care of you and he didn’t and that’s not your fault. It’s not your fault you trusted him. It’s not your fault, El.”

When he finished Mike turned and kissed the crown of her head, laying his cheek on her hair, but even this gentle, unobtrusive touch was too much for El in her current state. The air was crackling with the energy of an oncoming storm, and all she wanted to do was curl up and die, but when she reached for Mike to push him away she found herself clutching his arm instead, her fingertips digging into his flesh. The branches above their heads were bowing away, creaking and snapping as she pressed her face into his shoulder and her control started to slip. The forest had gone silent but for the deep groan of the trees, a sound she felt in her bones long before she really heard it, and the high, keening death wail of some poor, hurt animal; a rabbit maybe, or a fox, or a deer, some innocent thing caught beneath one of the limbs that had started to fall around them. Mike was breathing hard, his shoulders heaving beneath her hands as she wrapped her arms around him, clinging desperately to the only safety she could find. He was afraid but he held her tightly, one arm around her waist as he cradled her head, and with his heartbeat in one ear and his palm over the other she realized with a start that the terrible noise she could her was coming from her own mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” Mike said thickly, pressing his cheek against her temple. “I’m so sorry, El. I can’t fix it. I can’t fix it but I’m here. I’ll always be here. Look at me.”

Cradling her face in gentle hands, Mike leaned down until his forehead was resting against her own. The pads of his thumbs swept across the apples of her cheeks, wiping at the tears that were still falling as she opened her eyes. He was so close that she couldn’t see anything but his eyes - even his lashes were a dark, unfocused smudge through her hazy vision. 

“I promise,” he said, chin trembling as he fought through his own emotions. “I _promise_ I’ll always be here. As long as I’m alive, as long as you want me, I’m here. You don’t have to be alone with this - not _ever_ , not unless you want to, okay? I promise.” Then he kissed her, just the lightest touch of his lips to hers, both their mouths wet and sticky with tears, before folding her up in his arms and holding her tightly to his chest. 

After that, there was nothing left to do but cry.

They sat there for a long time, holding onto each other; so long that the sun had moved, and El wondered if she hadn’t fallen asleep. She was so tired so nearly fell when Mike finally pulled her to her feet. She’d tried to protest, but the damp underbrush had soaked through their pants and they were both shivering with cold. Tucking herself into Mike’s side, she let him wrap an arm around her shoulders and lead her past the wreckage her emotions had left in their wake. The ground around where they’d sat had been scraped clear, leaving a nearly perfect circle of bare black earth, and anything growing there had been ripped out by its roots and thrown back, including a few smaller trees. The destruction weighed heavy on her, but not heavier than her exhaustion, and by the time they’d made it back to the cabin she was almost asleep on her feet. 

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Mike pulled her snow boots off while she struggled out of her coat. He sat down beside her as she tucked herself back into bed, helping her pull the covers up before he bent to kiss her cheek, his mouth warm on her chilly skin. 

Running his fingertips through her messy hair, he said, “I love you so much.”

All she wanted was to sleep, but there was one final thing before she could rest. “I’m sorry,” she said as she reached for his hand and laced their fingers together. “It’s not easy.”

“What’s not easy?” Mike asked as his hand tightened around hers. 

She was too tired to dance around it. “Loving me.”

Mike shook his head. “No,” he said hotly. “No, you’re wrong. You’re tired, and you’re not thinking straight, and you’re just - you’re wrong. So I’m gonna try again. I’m gonna say I love you so much, and then you say…”

Smiling, she stopped fighting, shut her eyes, and said, “I love you too.”

Then, for the first time in a long time, she slept. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with me through this kids! Just an epilogue left.


	8. Epilogue:i'll have a new day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, guys, I'm so sorry this is late! The holidays got away from me and suddenly we were travelling and I wasn't ready! Eep!

“Wow,” Will breathed, blinking against the sunlight as his face turned upward. 

“I know,” Mike agreed with a nod.

El’s fingers, tucked neatly into his elbow, tightened as she followed his gaze. The branches above their heads were snapped and broken so a perfect circle of clear blue sky was plainly visible, as if some unseen force had blasted skyward and destroyed everything in its path. The circle of undisturbed ground where he and El had sat was gone, but the dirt was still uncovered like someone had cleared the vegetation, and the earth-covered roots of the trees she’d felled were a clear indicator that something strange had happened. Two and a half weeks had not been enough time to undo the damage. 

“Mike,” El said quietly, tugging on his arm. Then, a little louder, “Will.” 

The boys smiled at each other as she led them away. Mike shook his arm to dislodge her hand, pleased when her immediate reaction was to lace their fingers together - just as he’d known it would be. She held on gently, mindful of the stitches on his knuckles (five on the left hand, and six on right) beneath the white medical dressing, but Mike clutched her back tightly, still too scared she would disappear if he didn’t hold onto her with everything he had. The two weeks she’d been in bed had been worse than the entire year she’d been missing, because she’d been present in every way except the one that counted. Watching her suffer and not knowing how to help had been his own personal hell. 

A lot of that afternoon was a blur to him. Hearing about what they’d done to her had felt like having his heart ripped right out of his chest, and he knew it could only be a fraction of what El was feeling. He’d held it together long enough to make sure she was safe and comfortable, but their slow walk home had given his anger time to overtake all his other emotions and he’d barely been able to make it outside before he’d started sobbing. Not wanting to wake her he’d stumbled away from the cabin, crying so hard he couldn’t see where he was going, but the tears weren’t enough - nothing would ever be enough, not for what they’d done to her.

That’s when things had gotten hazy. He’d known what he was doing in a detached sort of way, and for awhile it had felt like dreaming. His arms had felt heavy but his closed fists were lighter than air, and when the skin on the knuckles of his right hand had split he’d felt the pain from far away, dimly aware that he needed to stop because he was hurting himself, but what did any of it fucking matter when he lived in a world where grownups kidnapped little girls and used them and violated them without thought or feeling?

So he hadn’t stopped, not for a long time; not until blood was running down his arms underneath the cuffs of his sweater, not until his fingers were sticky with it and his arms ached and his hands were numb. He’d come back to himself kneeling in the dirt with his forehead pressed to the rough bark of the tree he’d broken his hands open on, crying quietly with his heart pounding in his chest. 

The pain hadn’t hit him until he’d put his hands under the stream of cold water running from the cabin’s bathroom faucet. The sight of Hopper in the doorway had shocked a little bit of sense into him, but he’d been too tired to be embarrassed, so he’d taken the glass of whiskey the man had handed him, along with the gentle offer of privacy and retreated to the bathroom to bandage his wounds. A little gauze and some white medical dressing was all he’d ever be capable of on his own, and when he’d managed it he’d grabbed the whiskey and slugged it back in one long gulp that had burned his throat and left him coughing, eyes and nose streaming.

After, he’d joined Hopper on the worn couch, slouching until his head tilted onto the couch’s back and he could stare at the ceiling. They’d sat in silence for a long time before Hop had said, “You’re gonna need stitches.”

Mike had rolled his head to look at the older man, but Hop had nodded down at his hand, which was lying on the couch. He’d bled through the bandages, but hadn’t been able to bring himself to care so all he’d done was shrug and let his head drop backwards again. 

Hopper had sighed. “Look, the last thing I wanna do is inflate your ego, but... I’m impressed with how you’re handling this, and I think you maybe need to hear that. So.” He’d made a vague waving gesture, as if to say ‘there you go’ then lapsed back into silence. 

Mike had squeezed his eyes shut and said, “I hate this.”

“Me too. But sometimes all you can do is be there. You can’t fight all her fights for her anymore than I can. You just- you just have to trust her, and be there when she needs you.”

“Here?,” El said, drawing him out of his memories and away from the sharp ache in his hands as she smiled up at him uncertainly. 

“Looks good,” Will said from somewhere behind him, and El’s smile brightened as she peered over his shoulder at their friend. 

Mike’s response was to wrap an arm around her shoulders and press a lingering kiss to her forehead before mumbling, “Whatever you want.”

He thrilled a little when she sighed happily and leaned into him, tilting her chin so she could kiss him properly. It was a chaste, gentle thing but his heart was pounding and his stomach was swooping and it was like kissing her for the first time all over again, thrilling and terrifying and so full of hope and promise because kissing her was everything and she was _there_ , she was with him, together they could do anything-

“Guys,” Will snapped with absolutely no malice. “Seriously. You promised.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mike groused as El hid her face against his neck, her shoulder shaking in silent laughter. “You need some help?”

“I got it,” Will said, but El still moved away to help him shake out the blanket he’d been carrying, grabbing two of the corners so they could lay it out on the soft, dead grass beside a large, dark pond. The day was unseasonably warm and sunny, perfect for everyone’s lifting mood, but the wind across the water was still chilly, even if it had lost some of its bite, and they sat close together huddled under a second, smaller blanket that El had carried while they ate the sandwiches and apple slices and chips Mike had hauled in his backpack. The boys talked quietly while El listened, interjecting occasionally in her quiet, thoughtful way, and by the time noon rolled around the sun had gotten high enough to forgo the second blanket and spread out. 

Mike ended up sitting cross-legged with El’s head in his lap, and then she coaxed Will to lay with his head on her stomach so she could card her fingers through his hair while Mike did the same to her. 

(A part of his brain said, ‘ _This is weird_ ,’ but it was so easy to ignore when he heard it in Ted Wheeler’s voice. It didn’t feel weird; it felt peaceful and perfect.)

He’d brought a couple of books but before he could pick one himself El pulled _To Kill A Mockingbird_ from the small stack beside his knee. 

“Will you read?” she asked, tacking on a belated, “Please?”

Mike blushed as he took the book from her, glancing at Will as his face heated up. He had no problems with reading out loud in class, or to the entire party, but reading aloud to El had always been an intimate, vulnerable thing. Will, who’d been resting with both eyes closed, had opened one eye to watch Mike’s face when El had made her request, but he shut it quickly when he saw Mike looking at him, pressing his lips together to contain his laughter. 

“Please?” El said again, more plaintively. She looked troubled now, with her mouth pursed and her brow slightly furrowed. “I’m so far behind.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said quickly, hoping his face didn’t show too much of his own worry. El had been back in school for a week, and had spent most of her waking moments trying to catch up on the work she’d missed in an effort to avoid summer school - or worse, being held back a year - but she was still having trouble focusing for too long, and got tired quickly. In her absence her English class had moved on to the next book on the syllabus, and Mike, naturally, wanted to do everything he could for her. “It’s gonna be okay. You’re working really hard, and I’ll help, and it’ll be fine.”

Her eyes clouded over as she looked at him, like she was seeing something else, and for an awful instant he thought she might cry, but then she smiled. It was a soft, fragile smile and Mike was so in love it almost hurt. As if sensing the shift she reached up to cup his cheek, her palm unusually warm against his cool skin. Her thumb stroked across the corner of his mouth and over his cheek, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Will reach for her free hand, his eyes still closed. 

She exhaled, sighing, and said, “I know.”

Mike nodded. “Good.”

El closed her eyes then, shifting a little to get comfortable as Mike thumbed through the novel’s foreward, looking for the first chapter heading. 

“All right,” he said, worming his free hand beneath the collar of her sweatshirt so he could lay his bandaged hand on the skin above her heart. El laid her hand over his, her fingers fitting easily into the spaces between his own. 

Sighing, he began, “When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow…” and the day warmed slowly around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp. That's that, then.

**Author's Note:**

> So, guys - I went to rehab. If you're suffering with addiction or mental illness, please seek help. It can get better. I promise. 
> 
> As always, I never could have done this without Artemisrae. She's the best writing partner an author could ever have, and together we make magic. Please leave kudos and comments, and keep your eye peeled for the next chapter. The fic is finished in its entireity and will update as scheduled.


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